How does AI learn to compete, and defend?
Join the Department of Computing and Software for a distinguished research seminar with Dr. Una-May O’Reilly, Senior Research Scientist and leader of the ALFA Group at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).
About the talk
Nature offers countless examples of adversaries evolving in response to one another as they compete to survive and thrive. Inspired by these dynamics, coevolutionary algorithms model how competing strategies can evolve together, while adapting these principles to meet engineering requirements and emerging technological opportunities.
Dr. O’Reilly will introduce the Stealth project, which models the coevolution of non-compliant tax shelters and tax auditing. She will explore how the project’s coevolutionary algorithm has evolved with the emergence of large language models and extend the discussion to cybersecurity, examining the implications of adversarial paradigms in the training of foundation models.
About the speaker
Dr. Una-May O’Reilly is a Senior Research Scientist and leader of the ALFA Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). An AI and machine learning researcher for more than 20 years, her work focuses on Adversarial Intelligence: the intelligence leveraged in competitive offense-versus-defence environments, with the goal of advancing Artificial Adversarial Intelligence.
Her research spans taxation, cybersecurity and financial fraud, and includes the development of new deep learning and evolutionary algorithms.
O’Reilly’s academic accomplishments include an honorary doctorate from Dalhousie University, multiple Best Paper and Impact awards, the SIGEVO Recognizing Outstanding Achievements in Evolutionary Computation Award, the SPECIES Outstanding Achievements in Evolutionary Computation Award, and numerous keynote presentations, including the 2024 ACM SIGEVO Distinguished Lecture at GECCO.
She holds a B.Sc. from the University of Calgary and an M.C.S. and Ph.D. from Carleton University.
