On Wednesday, October 23, 2024, from 12:00PM to 1:30PM, Emily M. Bender (University of Washington) will give a seminar entitled “Sense-making with artificial interlocutors and risks of language technology”, for the Doctorate in Cognitive Computing (DIC) program at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM).

To participate via Zoom, click here.

The seminar is co-sponsored by the Centre de Recherche en Éthique (CRÉ), in collaboration with the Cognitive Science Institute (ISC), the Doctorate in Cognitive Computing (DIC) program, and the Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence (CRIA) at UQÀM.

Abstract

Humans make sense of language in context, bringing to bear their own understanding of the world, including their own model of their interlocutor’s understanding of the world. In this talk, I will explore various potential risks that arise when humans bring this sense-making capacity to interactions with artificial interlocutors. What happens in conversations where one interlocutor has no access (or extremely limited access) to meaning and all the interpretative work instead rests with the other interlocutor? I will briefly explore what this entails for the design of language technology.