The research group "Reliable Machine Learning" studies the properties of machine learning algorithms. In view of the recent success of deep learningmethods in applications like image recognition, speech recognition, and automatic translation, the group especially focuses on properties of deep neural networks.
Although a neural network trained e.g. for an image classification task might work well on "real inputs", it has been repeatedly shown empirically that such networks are vulnerable to adversarial examples: a minimal perturbation (impercetible to a human) of the input data can cause the network to misclassify the input. Thus, an important research area of the group is to mathematically understand the reasons for the existence of such adversarial examples (i.e., the instability of trained neural networks), and - building on that understanding - to develop improved methods that yield provably robust neural networks.
Last week, Ingolstadt's Lord Mayor Dr. Michael Kern visited MIDS and the “KI in der Kiste” exhibition.
For Prof. Nadja Ray and Prof. Götz Pfander, this was a wonderful opportunity to talk to the mayor. Kern subsequently praised MIDS on his Instagram account as an “outstanding building block for the development of our local scientific landscape!”