about
language I’m going to focus on words and
we use language to express ourselves of
course we use more than just our words
but I’m going to focus on words because
the language we use helps us to express
our thoughts we can use language to
compose our thoughts to change our
thoughts to recompose our thoughts it’s
a means of our understanding our world
and interacting with our world I’m going
to talk about three aspects of language
missing slide I’m sorry I’m going to
talk about three aspects of language but
one thing we need to understand is how
when we’re how much we’re using language
in our world we use it when we’re
interacting socially we use it in email
in blogs and Twitter’s in the modern
world we use the written word more often
than ever so I’m going to talk about
three aspects of language of the
language that we use I’m going to start
with the multidimensionality of language
so I think you all know that we have
words sometimes the best words
sometimes not-so-great words and we have
sentences and you may have been required
to do this back in school anybody do
this before decompose a sentence and you
might know that a sentence has noun
phrases verb phrases it has it might
have prepositions for example in this
example the bear and the trout and the
that one that okay so but you know the
things that sentences are used to convey
where things are what an actor is and
what their what action that they’re
conveying and you know that language has
meaning it has semantics and that those
semantics have relationships but so we
have words sentences and semantics but
I’m talking about something beyond that
language is multi-dimensional it’s more
than the words of the sentence and the
semantics so let’s start let’s think
about words words have features so for
example we already talked about a word
is a type of a word but the word the
type of the word it’s numbness has
importance for understanding it’s
conveying of an action has importance
for our understanding of language there
are other features image ability so the
bear and the woods the bear you could
probably imagine but love and the air is
a little bit different it’s harder to
imagine or the comfort of the chair or
the lack thereof that you’re sitting in
that you can imagine so we also have
Association
so if I say doctor you say most people
say nurse and if I say good you say bad
everyone played along right that time
and we have emotions that are attached
to words and so if I talk about fear and
politics that has different emotion
emotions than if I talk about kittens
and hope so these are just a few of the
features that we use when we’re talking
about language or when we’re thinking
about language these are the only the
few other features about words we have
all of our experiences all of your
experiences are packed into those words
that you’re using and you use all of
those experiences when you’re
understanding language I’m going to make
one brief example and that is hat so if
you have a cat it’s a noun it’s familiar
you learned the word cat when you were a
wee babe and it you have images so for
example I could bring up cat images all
day long and you would not get bored and
um it also brings up emotions and
actions so cats do things sentences have
features too so we already talked about
syntax syntax itself can visit the
syntax of the sentence is it one of its
features
but there’s more to that syntax or sorry
sentences are there for a reason there
are objectives roles they have the
associations between uh sentences the
associations between what I said before
and what I’m saying now so
multidimensionality we can all think on
the two-dimensional plane and we can
most of us can think
three dimensional world but I’m talking
about something well beyond that I’m
talking about a multidimensionality of
language where we’re talking about
hundreds of features that when you’re
talking those features are all involved
in what you’re saying you’re using all
of those features when you are
communicating so how do we capture the
multidimensionality of language I’m not
going to talk about how we capture in
the brain I’m going to talk about how we
capture it automatically using automated
tools called natural language processing
natural language processing is our
automated tools automated methods
algorithms that we use to process
natural language meaning language
generated by humans instead of by
computers so what this means is we can
take these multiple dimensions of
language and capture them automatically
via automated tools so language is
multi-dimensional and we can capture
that and when we capture that
multidimensionality it is revealing so I
think you’ve all experienced doing email
and the ad popping up next to where
you’re typing now you might be talking
about alcohol and a bottle of tequila
pops up how did they know or you might
be talking about something more refined
and an ad for ballet pops up so you’ve
all heard that’s just for commercial
purposes right and you probably know
so I want to take you back just a few
years to a familiar face Edward Snowden
how many people recognize that face so
he was a CIA agent c.i.a
Defense Intelligence Agency employee and
an NSA contractor who in 2013 released
an unknown number of documents to
reporters and let’s and what he revealed
to the public was that the government
was it hasn’t had been gathering
information about the public through
tools like Ashland
prism and dish fire and one of the
things he said was that the u.s. was
gathering more tool more information
about people automatically online than
they were through interviews so let me
take you back to one interview by Brian
Williams in 2004 when I think about an
instance that that really just struck me
is oh my god we can do this and that we
can do it to anyone was that people at
NSA analysts can actually watch people’s
internet communications watch them draft
correspondence and actually watch their
thoughts form as they type as you write
a message you know an analyst at the NSA
or any other service out there that’s
using this kind of attack against people
can actually see you write sentences in
the back space over your mistakes and
then change the words and then kind of
pause and think about what you wanted to
say and then change it and it’s this
extraordinary intrusion not just into
your communications you’re finished
messages but you’re actually drafting
think so what information is in your
words
well our strong stance is the word
service proxies to actions skills
interactions emotions and your thoughts
we can assess using NLP emotions this is
an easy one we can assess confusion
boredom engagement we can assess whether
or not you are lying we can also assess
individual differences so we can assess
your reading ability your writing
ability how much you know about a topic
how much you know about the world we can
even assess your ability to process
information your working memory capacity
we can take words that you produce
potentially verbally in a discussion but
online in an essay in a blog in an email
in a tweet we can take those and we can
assess an abundance of information about
the individual how do we do it well we
take all those features we take the
multidimensionality of language we take
that we use machine learning algorithms
we use machine learning and we create
algorithms and those algorithms predict
what people are doing what people are
thinking and what their abilities are so
language is revealing but language is
also powerful now there are entities
that are doing for malicious purposes
but we are scientists we are educators
so how do we use that one of the ways we
use this in my laboratory is by create
intelligent tutoring systems that
provide that assess various aspects of
related to education like text
difficulty essay quality grammar
mechanics that’s an easy one self
explaining quality so if you’re
something
how well are you explaining it we can
assess various things and we’ve used
this too we’ve used this ability to
understand language and our knowledge of
how language improves learning that
words are tools we need to understand
that also in addition putting your words
out there externalizing your words
externalizing your language using your
language engaging explaining text
explaining your thoughts engaging in
discussions with all with others all of
these things all of these are things
that improve your learning improve
students learning so we combine those
things in automated tutoring systems we
combine our ability to automatically
assess language with this power of
language the power of language to
improve learning we’ve done so in two
technologies that we’ve created so far
one is writing Pal and one is istar so I
start is an interactive strategy
tutoring system for active reading and
thinking and the writing Pal is a
tutoring system that provides students
with tutoring on how to better right
both of these use AI and both of these
you sit systems use NLP and both of them
are all of them both of them are gained
based so they engage the student while
the student is learning so going back to
Snowden he said we can do this people at
NASA NSA analysts actually into the way
you think though they do language is
powerful though and you need to use it
thank [Applause]