Session #12, Part 1: NLP Research in the Age of Large Language Models
Henning Wachsmuth (Germany)
Natural language processing (NLP) has recently got into the center of public attention to AI, due to the impressive capabilities of large language models (LLM) such as the one underlying ChatGPT.
LLMs cannot only generate text that is barely distinguishable from human-written anymore, but the most recent LLMs can even tackle problems successfully that they have never seen before. In this talk, I start from the general functionalities of LLMs, before I presented insights from selected research of my group involving LLMs to reconstruct, optimize, and create natural language text for specific NLP tasks. On this basis, I look at the recent breakthroughs that caused the success of ChatGPT-like technologies and the paradigm shift that comes with it.
Session #12, Part 2: Reading and Writing the World with Data
Travis Weiland (USA)
The interplay between data and society has grown more and more powerful with the rise of our current information age. Data is constantly being collected in unimaginable quantities and used to make decisions and shape the very reality we experience.
Some highlight the amazing potential of data’s power to create a better world and others see portents of how such use of data will only exacerbate inequities and lead to the very downfall of democracy. Regardless of what stance you take, being data literate is crucial, but it is unclear what kind of data literacy is important and for whom. In this talk I will lay the groundwork for taking a critical literacy perspective on data literacy to focus on reading and writing the word and the world with data. I will also spend time connecting such work to practice by discussing an ongoing research to practice partnership with teachers and share a framework for thinking about practices of reading the word and the world with data visualizations.
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