BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//128.220.36.25//NONSGML kigkonsult.se iCalcreator 2.26.9// CALSCALE:GREGORIAN METHOD:PUBLISH X-FROM-URL:https://www.clsp.jhu.edu X-WR-TIMEZONE:America/New_York BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/New_York X-LIC-LOCATION:America/New_York BEGIN:STANDARD DTSTART:20231105T020000 TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 RDATE:20241103T020000 TZNAME:EST END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT DTSTART:20240310T020000 TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 RDATE:20250309T020000 TZNAME:EDT END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT UID:ai1ec-20987@www.clsp.jhu.edu DTSTAMP:20240328T144033Z CATEGORIES;LANGUAGE=en-US:Seminars CONTACT: DESCRIPTION:Abstract\nWhile there is a vast amount of text written about ne arly any topic\, this is often difficult for someone unfamiliar with a spe cific field to understand. Automated text simplification aims to reduce th e complexity of a document\, making it more comprehensible to a broader au dience. Much of the research in this field has traditionally focused on si mplification sub-tasks\, such as lexical\, syntactic\, or sentence-level s implification. However\, current systems struggle to consistently produce high-quality simplifications. Phrase-based models tend to make too many po or transformations\; on the other hand\, recent neural models\, while prod ucing grammatical output\, often do not make all needed changes to the ori ginal text. In this thesis\, I discuss novel approaches for improving lexi cal and sentence-level simplification systems. Regarding sentence simplifi cation models\, after noting that encouraging diversity at inference time leads to significant improvements\, I take a closer look at the idea of di versity and perform an exhaustive comparison of diverse decoding technique s on other generation tasks. I also discuss the limitations in the framing of current simplification tasks\, which prevent these models from yet bei ng practically useful. Thus\, I also propose a retrieval-based reformulati on of the problem. Specifically\, starting with a document\, I identify co ncepts critical to understanding its content\, and then retrieve documents relevant for each concept\, re-ranking them based on the desired complexi ty level.\nBiography\nI’m a research scientist at the HLTCOE at Johns Hopk ins University. My primary research interests are in language generation\, diverse and constrained decoding\, and information retrieval. During my P hD I focused mainly on the task of text simplification\, and now am workin g on formulating structured prediction problems as end-to-end generation t asks. I received my PhD in July 2021 from the University of Pennsylvania w ith Chris Callison-Burch and Marianna Apidianaki. DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211022T120000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211022T131500 LOCATION:Hackerman Hall B17 @ 3400 N. Charles Street\, Baltimore\, MD 21218 SEQUENCE:0 SUMMARY:Reno Kriz (HLTCOE – JHU) “Towards a Practically Useful Text Simplif ication System” URL:https://www.clsp.jhu.edu/events/reno-kriz-hltcoe-jhu-towards-a-practica lly-useful-text-simplification-system/ X-COST-TYPE:free X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:\\n\\n
\\nAbstr act
\nWhile there is a vast amount of text written about ne arly any topic\, this is often difficult for someone unfamiliar with a spe cific field to understand. Automated text simplification aims to reduce th e complexity of a document\, making it more comprehensible to a broader au dience. Much of the research in this field has traditionally focused on si mplification sub-tasks\, such as lexical\, syntactic\, or sentence-level s implification. However\, current systems struggle to consistently produce high-quality simplifications. Phrase-based models tend to make too many po or transformations\; on the other hand\, recent neural models\, while prod ucing grammatical output\, often do not make all needed changes to the ori ginal text. In this thesis\, I discuss novel approaches for improving lexi cal and sentence-level simplification systems. Regarding sentence simplifi cation models\, after noting that encouraging diversity at inference time leads to significant improvements\, I take a closer look at the idea of di versity and perform an exhaustive comparison of diverse decoding technique s on other generation tasks. I also discuss the limitations in the framing of current simplification tasks\, which prevent these models from yet bei ng practically useful. Thus\, I also propose a retrieval-based reformulati on of the problem. Specifically\, starting with a document\, I identify co ncepts critical to understanding its content\, and then retrieve documents relevant for each concept\, re-ranking them based on the desired complexi ty level.
\nBiography
\nI ’m a research scientist at the HLTCOE at Johns Hopkins University. My prim ary research interests are in language generation\, diverse and constraine d decoding\, and information retrieval. During my PhD I focused mainly on the task of text simplification\, and now am working on formulating struct ured prediction problems as end-to-end generation tasks. I received my PhD in July 2021 from the University of Pennsylvania with Chris Callison-Burc h and Marianna Apidianaki.
\n\n X-TAGS;LANGUAGE=en-US:2021\,Kriz\,October END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT UID:ai1ec-22423@www.clsp.jhu.edu DTSTAMP:20240328T144033Z CATEGORIES;LANGUAGE=en-US:Seminars CONTACT: DESCRIPTION: DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20221007T120000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20221007T131500 LOCATION:Hackerman Hall B17 @ 3400 N. Charles Street\, Baltimore\, MD 21218 SEQUENCE:0 SUMMARY:Ariya Rastrow (Amazon) URL:https://www.clsp.jhu.edu/events/ariya-rastrow-amazon-2/ X-COST-TYPE:free X-TAGS;LANGUAGE=en-US:2022\,October\,Rastrow END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT UID:ai1ec-24481@www.clsp.jhu.edu DTSTAMP:20240328T144033Z CATEGORIES;LANGUAGE=en-US:Seminars CONTACT: DESCRIPTION:Abstract\nNatural language provides an intuitive and powerful i nterface to access knowledge at scale. Modern language systems draw inform ation from two rich knowledge sources: (1) information stored in their par ameters during massive pretraining and (2) documents retrieved at inferenc e time. Yet\, we are far from building systems that can reliably provide i nformation from such knowledge sources. In this talk\, I will discuss path s for more robust systems. In the first part of the talk\, I will present a module for scaling retrieval-based knowledge augmentation. We learn a co mpressor that maps retrieved documents into textual summaries prior to in- context integration. This not only reduces the computational costs but als o filters irrelevant or incorrect information. In the second half of the t alk\, I will discuss the challenges of updating knowledge stored in model parameters and propose a method to prevent models from reciting outdated i nformation by identifying facts that are prone to rapid change. I will con clude my talk by proposing an interactive system that can elicit informati on from users when needed.\nBiography\nEunsol Choi is an assistant profess or in the Computer Science department at the University of Texas at Austin . Prior to UT\, she spent a year at Google AI as a visiting researcher. He r research area spans natural language processing and machine learning. Sh e is particularly interested in interpreting and reasoning about text in a dynamic real world context. She is a recipient of a Facebook research fel lowship\, Google faculty research award\, Sony faculty award\, and an outs tanding paper award at EMNLP. She received a Ph.D. in computer science and engineering from University of Washington and B.A in mathematics and comp uter science from Cornell University. DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20240315T120000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20240315T131500 LOCATION:Hackerman Hall B17 @ 3400 N. Charles Street\, Baltimore\, MD 21209 SEQUENCE:0 SUMMARY:Eunsol Choi (University of Texas at Austin) “Knowledge-Rich Languag e Systems in a Dynamic World” URL:https://www.clsp.jhu.edu/events/eunsol-choi-university-of-texas-at-aust in-knowledge-rich-language-systems-in-a-dynamic-world/ X-COST-TYPE:free X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:\\n\\n
\\nAbstr act
\nNatural language provides an intuitive and powerful i nterface to access knowledge at scale. Modern language systems draw inform ation from two rich knowledge sources: (1) information stored in their par ameters during massive pretraining and (2) documents retrieved at inferenc e time. Yet\, we are far from building systems that can reliably provide i nformation from such knowledge sources. In this talk\, I will discuss path s for more robust systems. In the first part of the talk\, I will present a module for scaling retrieval-based knowledge augmentation. We learn a co mpressor that maps retrieved documents into textual summaries prior to in- context integration. This not only reduces the computational costs but als o filters irrelevant or incorrect information. In the second half of the t alk\, I will discuss the challenges of updating knowledge stored in model parameters and propose a method to prevent models from reciting outdated i nformation by identifying facts that are prone to rapid change. I will con clude my talk by proposing an interactive system that can elicit informati on from users when needed.
\nBiography
\nEunsol Choi is an assistant professor in the Computer Scie nce department at the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to UT\, she spe nt a year at Google AI as a visiting researcher. Her research area spans n atural language processing and machine learning. She is particularly inter ested in interpreting and reasoning about text in a dynamic real world con text. She is a recipient of a Facebook research fellowship\, Google facult y research award\, Sony faculty award\, and an outstanding paper award at EMNLP. She received a Ph.D. in computer science and engineering from Unive rsity of Washington and B.A in mathematics and computer science from Corne ll University.
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