Events Calendar

NL Seminar-Dungeons and Discourse: Using Computational Storytelling to Look at Natural Language Use

Speaker: Lara Martin, University of Pennsylvania

Talk Title: Dungeons and Discourse: Using Computational Storytelling to Look at Natural Language Use

Series: NL Seminar

Abstract: Although we are currently riding a technological wave of personal assistants, many of these agents still struggle to communicate appropriately. In particular, these systems lack coherence, the ability to adapt to novel situations, creativity, emotional understanding, and collaboration. My work focuses on creating open world storytelling systems and developing agents that leverage speech understanding to communicate with humans more effectively. In this talk, I look at how tabletop roleplaying games such as Dungeons and Dragons can be used as motivation for how to improve conversational systems and understand how people communicate.

Biography: Dr. Lara J. Martin is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania working with Dr. Chris Callison Burch. In 2020, she earned her PhD in Human Centered Computing from the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she worked with Dr. Mark Riedl. She also has a Masters of Language Technologies from Carnegie Mellon University and a BS in Computer Science and Linguistics from Rutgers University New Brunswick. Dr. Martins work resides in the field of Human Centered Artificial Intelligence with a focus on natural language applications. They have worked in the areas of automated story generation, speech processing, and affective computing, publishing in top tier conferences such as AAAI and IJCAI. They have also been featured in Wired and BBC Science Focus magazine.

Host: Jon May and Meryem M'hamdi

More Info: https://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/

Webcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hldKVQj863o

Location: Information Science Institute (ISI) - Virtual Only

WebCast Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hldKVQj863o

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Pete Zamar

Event Link: https://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/