Preethi Lahoti 

About Me

I am a Research Scientist at Google Research, based in Zurich, Switzerland. My research spans Responsible AI, Safety in Large Language Models (LLMs), and Fairness in Machine Learning. Most recently, I have focused on developing new techniques to improve fairness and safety in LLMs. I have worked extensively on AI safety modeling techniques for Bard and Gemini to align AI models and improve their safety in downstream tasks.

I earned my PhD in Computer Science (on Operationalizing Fairness in Machine Learning) at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics, Germany, where I was very fortunate to be jointly advised by Prof. Gerhard Weikum and Prof. Krishna P. Gummadi. I earned my M.Sc. (honors) in Machine Learning at Aalto University, Finland, and B.Tech. (distinction) in Computer Science from Osmania University, India. During my studies I had the opportunity to do research internships at Google Brain (Mountain View, U.S.A), People + AI Research (PAIR) at Google Research (Zurich, Switzerland) and Bell Labs (Dublin, Ireland). Previously, I was a software engineer at Microsoft (India). In the 3 exciting years at Microsoft, I worked in various roles revolving around data, including data mining, data analytics, business intelligence, search engine technology and have learnt various aspects of building large and scalable systems.

Research Vision

My vision is a future where ML systems are reliable, robust, equitable and work for everyone.  My research focuses on enabling Responsible AI by developing new models and methods that detect, prevent and alleviate undesirable behaviors of ML by accounting for normative goals including fairness, robustness, trust and safety. I have been very fortunate to have collaborated with fantastic mentors in this space, including Gerhard Weikum, Krishna Gummadi, Alex Beutel, Jilin Chen, Fernando Diaz, Asia Biega, and Aris Gionis.