Event

Deep Language Models

  • Location

    Université du Luxembourg, Campus de Belval, Maison du Savoir, room 4.510

    2, place de l'Université

    4365, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg

  • Topic(s)
    Computer Science & ICT
  • Type(s)
    Conferences, Free of charge, In-person event

Programme:

14:00-14:45: Deep Language Models – Talk by Prof. Alessandra Palimgiano, School of Business and Economics of the VU Amsterdam

14:45-15:00: Questions and Answers

15:00-16:00: Cocktail

Abstract: Categories are cognitive tools that humans use to organize their experience, understand and function in the world, and understand and interact with each other, by grouping things together which can be meaningfully compared and evaluated. They are key to the use of language, the construction of knowledge and identity, and the formation of agents’ evaluations and decisions. Categorization is the basic operation humans perform e.g. when they relate experiences/actions/objects in the present to ones in the past, thereby recognizing them as instances of the same type. This is what we do when we try and understand what an object is or does, or what a situation means, and when we make judgments or decisions based on experience. The literature on categorization is expanding rapidly in fields ranging from cognitive linguistics to social and management science to AI, and the emerging insights common to these disciplines concern the dynamic essence of categories, and the tight interconnection between the dynamics of categories and processes of social interaction. In this talk, I will discuss my proposal for developing new generation explainable AI based on a strong theory of category-dynamics, which also allows for a principled approach to human-machine interaction.

Biography: Alessandra Palmigiano holds the Chair of Logic and Management Theory at the School of Business and Economics of the VU Amsterdam. In the past ten years (also thanks to a number of grants), her research has been focusing on categories (understood in the Aristotelian sense) as the most fundamental cognitive tools both for humans and machines. With her group, she is engaging in a research program aimed at building a foundational logical theory of social interaction and its dynamics on the basis of categories and categorization. This research program has direct relevance for a wide range of disciplines which include AI, (computational) linguistics, cognitive and social sciences, management science. Especially working in collaboration with researchers in these disciplines, her strong interest is in using formal tools for representing categorical dynamics to track changes in meaning, analyse the processes of decision-making via persuasion and deliberation, and other aspects of agency and cognition.