The place of Linguistics in Artificial Intelligence: Why do computers still don’t get it as well as we do?

Automatic language processing such as the ones you can find on translation platforms or youtube are all around us, using techniques from artificial intelligence and neural networks. What’s the place of linguistics there? If one reads that “Trump's administration does not believe that there is a risk of a pandemic due to the coronavirus", can we deduce that "there is a risk of a pandemic due to the coronavirus »? Can a computer deduce it? In this talk, we will briefly trace the evolution of the techniques used in natural language processing and show that, despite the progress in automatic language processing and high performance ratios (in the 80-90%), today's automatic systems are not yet able to understand language the way we do as humans. As soon as inferences require pragmatics, the systems' answers are wrong. There is therefore still progress to be made both in theoretical linguistics to better understand the factors that play a role in inference and in automatic language processing.

The Speaker: Marie-Catherine de Marneffe

Marie-Catherine de Marneffe obtained her PhD from Stanford University in 2012, and has been an associate professor in Linguistics at The Ohio State University. She got appointed as a FRNS Research Associate at UCL in 2021. Her research focuses on developing computational linguistic methods that capture what is conveyed by language beyond the literal meaning of the words. She recently worked on "veridicality": how do people interpret events they read about in the news, do they think such events really happen, did not happen, or are just a possibility?

14.11.22: Science & Cocktails #27

Loa Frida (fr)

Loa Frida est un groupe indie baroquelectronica (chant/claviers/batterie+machines) basé sur Toulouse.

Projet principal de la chanteuse et compositrice Anka Ujma, Loa Frida s'inscrit dans la constellation contemporaine de la pop indé dans ce qu’elle a de plus atypique et non standardisé – de Björk à Kate Bush en passant par St Vincent, Juana Molina ou Sufjan Stevens.

Les machines et sonorités synthétiques caractéristiques du groupe permettent de tisser autour du chant haut perché d'Anka une orchestration foisonnante et un fond toujours renouvelé de textures organiques et de formes complexes qui empruntent autant au minimalisme d'un Steve Reich qu'aux musiques électroniques, au trip-hop ou au post-rock – sans pour autant jamais céder aux références obligées.

Avec Anka Ujma (chant/claviers/compositions), Pierre Carsalade (claviers/machines) et Joris Lucchèse (batterie, pad).