Ankur Taly
Staff Research Scientist, Google Inc. (2012 -- 2019 and Jul. 2020 onwards)
Previously: Head of Data Science at Fiddler labs. (2019 -- 2020)
Ph.D: Stanford University, 2012
BTech: IIT Bombay, 2007
Email: ataly AT google.com
Research Interests: Explainability, Machine Learning, Logic and Formal methods, Programming languages, Security.
Curriculum Vitae: PDF
Recent blog posts:
Other News:
Research
- Fiddler labs (2019 -- 2020)
- Drove explainability techniques from research to industrial practice. Contributions: Contrastive explanations based on Shapley Values (paper), Conceptualized a model analysis framework called Slice and Explain, An attribution based method for obtaining algorithmic recourse.
- Google LLC (2012 -- 2019)
- Explaining Deep Neural Networks (2016 -- 2019): We study the problem of attributing the prediction of a deep network to its input features, as an attempt towards explaining individual predictions. For instance, in an object recognition network, an attribution method could tell us which pixels of the image were responsible for a certain label being picked (see this paper, this blog post, and these slides)
- Distributed Authorization (2012 -- 2016): This work revolves around designing and analyzing identity, authentication, and authorization frameworks for the Web, Cloud and other distributed system settings. (see the "Macaroons" paper at NDSS 2014)
- Stanford University (2007 -- 2012)
- Semantics for JavaScript
- Javascript Sandboxing (with Prof. John C. Mitchell and Dr. Sergio Maffeis): This work involved designing provably-secure language-based mechanisms for sandboxing untrusted JavaScript
- Hybrid Systems Verification (with Dr. Ashish Tiwari): This work involved formulating deductive techniques for synthesis and verification of hybrid systems.
PC Participation
FAccT 2022,
PLDI (ERC) 2019,
PLDI (ERC) 2014,
HOTSPOT 2013,
PLAS 2013,
POST 2014
Teaching
- Co-Instructed tutorials (with Krishnaram Kenthapady, Sahin Geyik, Varun Mithal, and Krishna Gade) on "Explainable AI in Industry" at KDD 2019, FAT* 2020, and WWW 2020.
Slides, Video
- Short course on "Practical Distributed Authorization" at FOSAD 2016 (summer school)
Lectures 1 and 2: PDF
Lectures 3 and 4: PDF
- Guest Lectures
- Axiomatic Attribution for Deep Networks
Interpretability and Explainability in Machine Learning (COMPSCI 282BR), Harvard University, Winter 2021
- The Explanation Game: Explaining Machine Learning Models using Shapley Values Slides
Security and Fairness of Deep Learning (ECE739), CMU Silicon Valley, Winter 2020
- Explaining Machine Learning Models
Engineering Safe Software Systems (ECE737), CMU Silicon Valley, Fall 2019
- Axiomatic Attribution for Deep Networks
Security and Fairness of Deep Learning (ECE739), CMU Silicon Valley, Winter 2018
- Sandboxing Untrusted JavaScript
Advanced Computer Security (CS223), University of California at Santa Cruz, 2012
- An Operational Semantics for JavaScript
Programming Language Theory (CS258), Stanford University, 2010
- Educational Videos
Students / Interns Advised
- [2023] Andrew Bai (PhD student at UCLA, co-advised with Chih-Kuan Yeh): Working on applications of training data influence to active learning.
- [2022] Minghen Li (PhD student at UC Riverside, co-advised with Binbin Xiong): Worked on label noise detection in training sets.
- [2021] Chih-kuan Yeh (PhD student at CMU): Worked on training data influence for NLP models.
- [2020] Susan Hao (PhD student at UC Berkeley): Worked on automatically slicing error distributions of machine learning models.
- [2018] Sahaj Garg (undergrad at Stanford University, jointly advised with Vincent Perot): Worked on enforcing fairness in text classification models.
- [2017] Pramod Kaushik Mudrakarta (PhD student at University of Chicago): Worked on analyzing a deep network for question-answering---called Neural Programmer---in order to understand its input-output behavior, extract rules from it, and leverage weaknesses in its logic to construct attacks against it.
- [2015] Siddhartha Jayanti (PhD student at MIT): Worked on formally verifying the Vanadium authorization protocol; see this
- [2014] Andres Erbsen (PhD student at MIT): Worked on the Vanadium security model; see this
Dissertation
Sandboxing Untrusted JavaScript (Abstract, PDF, Slides)
PhD Dissertation, Stanford University, 2013
Publications
- Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing
- Identifying and Mitigating the Security Risks of Generative AI -- Clark Barrett, Brad Boyd, Elie Burzstein, Nicholas Carlini, Brad Chen, Jihye Choi, Amrita Roy Chowdhury, Mihai Christodorescu, Anupam Datta, Soheil Feizi, Kathleen Fisher, Tatsunori Hashimoto, Dan Hendrycks, Somesh Jha, Daniel Kang, Florian Kerschbaum, Eric Mitchell, John Mitchell, Zulfikar Ramzan, Khawaja Shams, Dawn Song, Ankur Taly, Diyi Yang
Proc. of Foundations and Trends® in Privacy and Security 2023 PDF
- Interpretable Mixture of Experts -- Aya Abdelsalam Ismail, Sercan Ö. Arik, Jinsung Yoon, Ankur Taly, Soheil Feizi, Tomas Pfister
Proc. of TMLR 2023 PDF
- First is better than Last for Language Data Influence -- Chih-Kuan Yeh, Ankur Taly, Mukund Sundararajan, Frederick Liu, Pradeep Ravikumar
Proc. of NeurIPS 2022 PDF
- A Multistakeholder Approach Towards Evaluating AI Transparency Mechanisms -- Ana Lucic, Madhulika Srikumar, Umang Bhatt, Alice Xiang, Ankur Taly, Q. Vera Liao, Maarten de Rijke
Proc. of CHI 2021 Workshop on Operationalizing Human-Centered Perspectives in Explainable AI PDF
- Local Explanations via Necessity and Sufficiency: Unifying Theory and Practice -- David Watson, Limor Gultchin, Ankur Taly, Luciano Floridi
Proc. of Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI) 2021 PDF
- Explainable Machine Learning in Deployment -- Umang Bhatt, Alice Xiang, Shubham Sharma, Adrian Weller, Ankur Taly, Yunhan Jia, Joydeep Ghosh, Ruchir Puri, José M. F. Moura, Peter Eckersley
Proc. of Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAT*) 2020 PDF
- The Explanation Game: Explaining Machine Learning Models with Cooperative Game Theory -- Luke Merrick, Ankur Taly
Proc. of Cross Domain conference on Machine Learning and Knowledge Extraction (CD-MAKE), 2020 PDF [Award paper]
- Property Inference for Deep Neural Networks
-- Divya Gopinath, Hayes Converse, Corina S. Pasareanu, Ankur Taly
Proc. of Automated Software Engineering (ASE) 2019 PDF
- Using Attribution to Decode Dataset Bias in Neural Network Models for Chemistry -- Kevin McCloskey, Ankur Taly, Federico Monti, Michael P. Brenner, Lucy Colwell
Proc. of National Academy of Science (PNAS) 2019 PDF
- Exploring Principled Visualizations of Deep Network Attributions - Mukund Sundararajan, Jinhua Xu, Ankur Taly, Rory Sayres, Amir Najmi
Proc. of IUI Workshop on Explainable Smart Systems (ExSS) 2019 PDF
- Using a Deep Learning Algorithm and Integrated Gradients Explanation to Assist Grading for Diabetic Retinopathy - Rory Sayres, Ankur Taly et al.
Proc. of American Academy of Opthalmology 2018 PDF
- Counterfactual Fairness in Text Classification through Robustness -- Sahaj Garg, Vincent Perot, Nicole Limtiaco, Ankur Taly, Alex Beutel, Ed H. Chi
Proc. of AIES 2018 PDF
- Did the model understand the question? -- Pramod Mudrakarta, Ankur Taly, Mukund Sundararajan, Kedar Dhamdhere
Proc. of ACL 2018 PDF
- It was the training data pruning too! -- Pramod Mudrakarta, Ankur Taly, Mukund Sundararajan, Kedar Dhamdhere
On arxiv, 2018 PDF
- Assisted reads for diabetic retinopathy using a deep learning algorithm and integrated gradient explanation (extended abstract) -- Rory Sayres et al.
2018 Annual meeting of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophtalmology (ARVO), 2018 PDF
- Abductive Matching in Question Answering -- Kedar Dhamdhere, Kevin Mccurley, Mukund Sundararajan, Ankur Taly
On arxiv, 2017 PDF
- Axiomatic Attribution of Deep Networks -- Mukund Sundararajan, Ankur Taly, Qiqi Yan
Proc. of ICML 2017 PDF
- Gradients of Counterfactuals -- Mukund Sundararajan, Ankur Taly, Qiqi Yan
On arxiv, 2016 PDF
- Distributed Authorization
- Distributed Authorization in Vanadium -- Andres Erbsen, Asim Shankar, and Ankur Taly
Book chapter in FOSAD VIII (lecture notes) PDF
- Privacy, Discovery, and Authentication for the Internet of Things -- David Wu, Ankur Taly, Asim Shankar, Dan Boneh
Proc. of ESORICS 2016 PDF [Award paper]
- Distributed Authorization with Distributed Grammars -- Martın Abadi, Mike Burrows, Himabindu Pucha, Adam Sadovsky, Asim Shankar, and Ankur Taly
Proc. of PLABS 2015 PDF
- Macaroons: Cookies with Contextual Caveats for Decentralized Authorization in the Cloud -- Arnar Birgisson, Joe Politz, Ulfar Erlingsson, Ankur Taly, Michael Vrable, Mark Lentczner
Proc. of NDSS 2014 PDF
- Language-based Security, Web Security
- Automated Analysis of Security-critical JavaScript APIs -- Ankur Taly, Ulfar Erlingsson, Mark S. Miller, John C. Mitchell, Jasvir Nagra
Proc. of IEEE S&P (Oakland conference) 2011 PDF [Award paper]
- Separation Logic and Mashup Isolation Problem -- Ankur Taly
Stanford University Tech Report, 2010 PDF
-
Object Capabilities and Isolation of Untrusted Web Applications -- Sergio Maffeis, John C. Mitchell, Ankur Taly
Proc. of IEEE S&P (Oakland conference) 2010 PDF
- Isolating JavaScript with Filters, Rewriting, and Wrapper -- Sergio Maffeis, John C. Mitchell, Ankur Taly
Proc. of ESORICS 2009 PDF
- Run-Time Enforcement of Secure JavaScript Subsets
-- Sergio Maffeis, John C. Mitchell, Ankur Taly
W2SP 2009
PDF
- Language based Isolation of Untrusted JavaScript -- Sergio Maffeis, Ankur Taly
Proc. of CSF 2009
PDF
- An Operational Semantics for JavaScript -- Sergio Maffeis, John C. Mitchell, Ankur Taly
Proc. of APLAS 2008
PDF
- Static Analysis, Verification, Synthesis
- Automated Synthesis of Symbolic Instruction Encodings from I/O samples -- Patrice Godefroid, Ankur Taly
Proc. of PLDI 2012 PDF
- Synthesizing Switching Logic using Constraint Solving -- Ankur Taly, Ashish Tiwari, Sumit Gulwani
Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer (STTT 2011) Springer Link
- Switching Logic Synthesis for Reachability -- Ankur Taly, Ashish Tiwari
Proc. of EMSOFT 2010 PDF
- Deductive Verification of Continuous Dynamical Systems -- Ankur Taly, Ashish Tiwari
Proc. of FSTTCS 2009 PDF
- Synthesizing Switching Logic using Constraint Solving -- Ankur Taly, Ashish Tiwari, Sumit Gulwani
Proc. of VMCAI 2009 PDF
- Static Analysis by Policy Iteration on Relational domains -- Stephane Gaubert, Eric Goubault, Ankur Taly, Sarah Zennou
Proc. of ESOP 2007 PDF
- Efficient Symbolic Reachability of Networks of Transition Systems -- Sudeep Juvekar, Ankur Taly, Varun Kanade, Supratik Chakraborty
Proc. of General Motors Workshop on Next Generation Design and Verification Methodologies for Distributed Embedded Control Systems, Bangalore (2007) PDF