17 Apr [in two days] 14:00-15:30 SR14 (COM3 #01-23) and Zoom: Ryan Cotterell / A Formal Perspective on Language Modelling

[Min Yen KAN]

Hi all:

Ryan Cotterell (ETH) is coming to NUS this week to give a distinguished lecture at our AI Horizons series.  Since there's catering, please register for the event.  We hope to see some of you at the event (especially physically!)

 

We would like to invite you to attend the upcoming AI Horizons talk this Wednesday (17th April, 2024)

Title: A Formal Perspective on Language Modelling

Speaker: Ryan Cotterell, Assistant Professor, ETH 

https://rycolab.io/authors/ryan/
Date: Wed, 17th April 2024
Time: 14:00 PM - 15:30 PM

>> Kindly register for the event here: https://forms.office.com/r/D07crNZLqm

In-person Attendance
Location: Seminar Room 14, COM3-01-23, School of Computing, NUS
 
Live Virtual: Zoom link: https://nus-sg.zoom.us/j/81556311003?pwd=SytCRlJLOWtlcWUyWWxTT3V6VlJMQT09  
Passcode: 350204
 
Abstract: Language models—especially the large ones—are all the rage. And, for what will surely be one of only a few times in history, my field, natural language processing, is the center of world attention. Indeed, there is nearly a daily stream of articles in the popular press on the most recent advances in language modeling technology. In contrast to most of these articles (and most other talks on the topic), this tutorial-style presentation is not about forward progress in the area. Instead, I am going to take a step back and ask simple questions about the nature of language modeling itself. We will start with the most basic of questions: From a mathematical perspective, what is a language model? Next, the talk will turn philosophical. With all the talk of artificial general intelligence, what can theory of computation bring to bear on the computational power of language models? The talk will conclude with a statement of several recent theorems proven by my research group, the highlight of which is that no Transformer-based language model is Turing complete and, thus, we should be careful about labeling such language models, e.g., GPT-4, as general-purpose reasoners.

Bio: Ryan Cotterell is an assistant professor of computer science at ETH Zürich in the Institute for Machine Learning. He primarily works on computational and statistical approaches to language, but, every once and a while, a machine-learning paper slips in. You can read more about his and his collaborators’ research at rycolab.io.

[XINYANG YU]

Dear Professor, 

I am interested in joining the talk and I tried to register, but it seems like I do not have access to the form. May I ask if this is restricted to NUS? 

Thank you and best regards, 

Xinyang

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "SIngapore Natural language processing special interest Group (SING)" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sing+uns...@wing.comp.nus.edu.sg.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/wing.comp.nus.edu.sg/d/msgid/sing/CAHFZC42_EkB%2BpkJ%2BpYAw%3DJs7rsbnGuE9Xa%2B9Ath%3DH_2xNhpuzA%40mail.gmail.com.

[Min-Yen Kan]

Hi Xinyang, all:

Thank you for your email. The talk is open, anyone may attend, both physically and virtually. 

- M

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/wing.comp.nus.edu.sg/d/msgid/sing/CAGREhfH%2BBnpkhdHWQG6yVypxfvPam3Tr5sHwdZ8RmxwpcyPD_w%40mail.gmail.com.

[Min Yen KAN]

Hi all:

I've been informed that the form to register for the event has been modified to allow access from outside NUS (it's just for catering estimations, but please fill it in anyways).  Thank you!

The timing has been slightly modified to 14:15-15:15 (delay of 15 minutes; tomorrow!)

>> Kindly register for the event here: https://forms.office.com/r/D07crNZLqm

Cheers,

Min

--
Min-Yen KAN (Dr) :: Vice Dean (Undergraduate Studies) :: Associate Professor :: National University of Singapore :: NUS School of Computing

COM3 02-30, 11 Research Link, Singapore 119391 :: +65 6516 1885(DID) :: +65 6779 4580 (Fax) :: ka...@comp.nus.edu.sg (E) :: www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~kanmy (W)

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/wing.comp.nus.edu.sg/d/msgid/sing/CA%2B8fKxazhoeD3paYwX%2Br7VnV%3D0nWesgtX87V0AOEoVSdDA6rKQ%40mail.gmail.com.