The Algorithmic Self-Portrait: Deconstructing Memory in ChatGPT

To enable personalized and context-aware interactions, conversational AI systems have introduced a new mechanism: Memory. Memory creates what we refer to as the Algorithmic Self-portrait - a new form of personalization derived from users' self-disclosed information divulged within private conversations. While memory enables more coherent exchanges, the underlying processes of memory creation remain opaque, raising critical questions about data sensitivity, user agency, and the fidelity of the resulting portrait. To bridge this research gap, we analyze 2,050 memory entries from 80 real-world ChatGPT users. Our analyses reveal three key findings: (1) A striking 96% of memories in our dataset are created unilaterally by the conversational system, potentially shifting agency away from the user; (2) Memories, in our dataset, contain a rich mix of GDPR-defined personal data (in 28% memories) along with psychological insights about participants (in 52% memories); and (3)~A significant majority of the memories (84%) are directly grounded in user context, indicating faithful representation of the conversations. Finally, we introduce a framework-Attribution Shield-that anticipates these inferences, alerts about potentially sensitive memory inferences, and suggests query reformulations to protect personal information without sacrificing utility.

Social Biases in Knowledge Representations of Wikidata separates Global North from Global South

Knowledge Graphs have become increasingly popular due to their wide usage in various downstream applications, including information retrieval, chatbot development, language model construction, and many others. Link prediction (LP) is a crucial downstream task for knowledge graphs, as it helps to address the problem of the incompleteness of the knowledge graphs. However, previous research has shown that knowledge graphs, often created in a (semi) automatic manner, are not free from social biases. These biases can have harmful effects on downstream applications, especially by leading to unfair behavior toward minority groups. To understand this issue in detail, we develop a framework -- AuditLP -- deploying fairness metrics to identify biased outcomes in LP, specifically how occupations are classified as either male or female-dominated based on gender as a sensitive attribute. We have experimented with the sensitive attribute of age and observed that occupations are categorized as young-biased, old-biased, and age-neutral. We conduct our experiments on a large number of knowledge triples that belong to 21 different geographies extracted from the open-sourced knowledge graph, Wikidata. Our study shows that the variance in the biased outcomes across geographies neatly mirrors the socio-economic and cultural division of the world, resulting in a transparent partition of the Global North from the Global South.

Diversity matters: Robustness of bias measurements in Wikidata

With the widespread use of knowledge graphs (KG) in various automated AI systems and applications, it is very important to ensure that information retrieval algorithms leveraging them are free from societal biases. Previous works have depicted biases that persist in KGs, as well as employed several metrics for measuring the biases. However, such studies lack the systematic exploration of the sensitivity of the bias measurements, through varying sources of data, or the embedding algorithms used. To address this research gap, in this work, we present a holistic analysis of bias measurement on the knowledge graph. First, we attempt to reveal data biases that surface in Wikidata for thirteen different demographics selected from seven continents. Next, we attempt to unfold the variance in the detection of biases by two different knowledge graph embedding algorithms - TransE and ComplEx. We conduct our extensive experiments on a large number of occupations sampled from the thirteen demographics with respect to the sensitive attribute, i.e., gender. Our results show that the inherent data bias that persists in KG can be altered by specific algorithm bias as incorporated by KG embedding learning algorithms. Further, we show that the choice of the state-of-the-art KG embedding algorithm has a strong impact on the ranking of biased occupations irrespective of gender. We observe that the similarity of the biased occupations across demographics is minimal which reflects the socio-cultural differences around the globe. We believe that this full-scale audit of the bias measurement pipeline will raise awareness among the community while deriving insights related to design choices of data and algorithms both and refrain from the popular dogma of ``one-size-fits-all''.