Mikel Rodriguez
Google DeepMind
Mikel Rodriguez has spent over two decades working in the public and private sector securing the application of Artificial Intelligence in high-stakes consequential environments. At Google DeepMind, Mikel defines and leads the cross-functional AI Security Red and Blue "ReBl" team to ensure that foundational models are battle-tested with the rigor and scrutiny of real-world adversaries, and help drive research and tooling that will make this red-blue mindset scalable in preparation for AGI.
In his role as the Managing Director at MITRE Labs, Mikel built and led the AI Red Team for the Department of Defense that focused on deployed AI systems that can be susceptible to attacks involving evasion, data poisoning, model replication; and the exploitation of software flaws to deceive, manipulate, compromise, and render them ineffective. Mikel's team worked on developing methods to mitigate bias and defend against emerging ML attacks, securing the AI supply chain, and generally ensuring the trustworthiness of AI systems so they perform as intended in mission-critical environments. While at MITRE, his team in collaboration with many industry partners, published ATLAS (Adversarial Threat Landscape for AI Systems) - a knowledge base of adversary tactics, techniques, and case studies for machine learning (ML) systems based on real-world observations, demonstrations from ML red teams and security groups, and the state of the possible from academic research. Mikel firmly believes that AI's potential will only be realized through collaborations that help produce reliable, resilient, fair, interpretable, privacy preserving, and secure technologies.
Mikel received his Ph.D. in 2010 while working at University of Central Florida's computer vision lab with professor Mubarak Shah. He then moved to Paris where he worked as a post-doctoral research fellow at INRIA.
