Social Factors in Comp LingAI

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Advances in technologies for processing human languages have increasingly brought computational linguistics into contact with people. As such, what language reveals about people—and how AI algorithms make decisions affecting people based on their language—is of paramount concern. At the same time, contemporary algorithms for processing language offer powerful new tools for studying people and society on a large scale. Designed for students with grounding in computational linguistics, this course will examine the intersection of people, language, and algorithms with technical precision as well as an appreciation for human context. Topics will include: computational models of conversational interaction and power dynamics; emotions, sentiment, subjectivity, and politeness; toxic language; sociolinguistic variation; detection of attributes such as race and gender; issues of privacy, ethics, bias, and fairness, with special attention to minoritized speakers, languages, and dialects; and the use of large-scale language data for studying political framing and social movements like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter.