Abstract

Recent advances in large pretrained language models have unlocked new exciting applications for Natural Language Generation for creative tasks, such as lyrics or humour generation. In this talk we will discuss recent works by our team at Alexa AI and discuss current challenges: (1) Pun understanding and generation: We release new datasets for pun understanding and the novel task of context-situated pun generation, and demonstrate the value of our annotations for pun classification and generation tasks. (2) Song lyric generation: we design a hierarchical lyric generation framework that enables us to generate pleasantly-singable lyrics without training on melody-lyric aligned data, and show that our approach is competitive with strong baselines supervised on parallel data. (3) Create with Alexa: a multimodal story creation experience recently launched on Alexa devices, which leverages story text generation models in tandem with story visualization and background music generation models to produce multimodal stories for kids.

Biography

Alessandra Cervone is an Applied Scientist in the Natural Understanding team at Amazon Alexa AI. Alessandra holds an MSc in Speech and Language Processing from University of Edinburgh and a PhD in CS from University of Trento (Italy). During her PhD, Alessandra worked on computational models of coherence in open-domain dialogue advised by Giuseppe Riccardi. In the first year of the PhD, she was the team leader of one of the teams selected to compete in the first edition of the Alexa Prize. More recently, her research interests have been focused on natural language generation and its evaluation, in particular in the context of creative AI applications.

Abstract

The growing power in computing and AI promises a near-term future of human-machine teamwork. In this talk, I will present my research group’s efforts in understanding the complex dynamics of human-machine interaction and designing intelligent machines aimed to assist and collaborate with people. I will focus on 1) tools for onboarding machine teammates and authoring machine assistance, 2) methods for detecting, and broadly managing, errors in collaboration, and 3) building blocks of knowledge needed to enable ad hoc human-machine teamwork. I will also highlight our recent work on designing assistive, collaborative machines to support older adults aging in place.

Biography

Chien-Ming Huang is the John C. Malone Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the Johns Hopkins University. His research focuses on designing interactive AI aimed to assist and collaborate with people. He publishes in top-tier venues in HRI, HCI, and robotics including Science Robotics, HRI, CHI, and CSCW. His research has received media coverage from MIT Technology Review, Tech Insider, and Science Nation. Huang completed his postdoctoral training at Yale University and received his Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER award. https://www.cs.jhu.edu/~cmhuang/