The Linguistics Department welcomes Emily M. Bender, professor of Linguistics at the University of Washington and faculty director of the Professional Masters in Computational Linguistics (CLMS) program. Her research interests include the interaction of linguistics and NLP, computational semantics, multilingual NLP, and the societal impact of language technology. She will present "Meaning making with artificial interlocutors and risks of language technology."

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