Computer Science Distinguished Lecture Series (DLS)

The Computer Science Distinguished Lecture Series (DLS) is an ongoing program in the Department of Computer Science (CS) where distinguished leaders are invited to present lectures to the computing community. Since it began in the Fall of 2000, the DLS has successfully hosted many prominent computer scientists.

Everyone is welcome to join us!  Please note: Time or location may change, so be sure to confirm the details on our department events calendar a week prior to the date of the talk. 

Friday, November 8, 2024 at 2:30 PM

New Computer Science, Room 120

Title: Measuring Cultural Variation Using Natural Language Processing

Speaker: Lyle Ungar, University of Pennsylvania

Abstract: Cultures vary widely in how they view the world, for example being more individualist or collectivist. Such cultural differences are, of course, reflected in the words that people use. We first show a variety of ways in which multilingual language models are not multicultural; they speak Hindi or Mandarin, but still think like Americans. In contrast, we then present a scalable method that uses embedding-derived lexica to successfully measure regional variation in culture. 

Bio: Lyle Ungar is a Professor of Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania, where he also holds secondary appointments in Psychology, Bioengineering, Genomics and Computational Biology, and Operations, Information and Decisions. His group uses natural language processing and explainable AI for psychological research, including analyzing social media and cell phone sensor data to better understand the drivers of physical and mental well-being. They are currently building socio-emotionally sensitive GPT-based tutors and coaches.