Towards Afrocentric Natural Language Processing (NLP): Where we are and where we can go

Friday, September 30, 2022,

3:30-5:00 pm (Zoom only)

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Aligning with the theme of language diversity, I discuss the major linguistic and sociopolitical challenges facing development of NLP technologies for African languages. Situating African languages in a typological framework, I discuss how the particulars of these languages can be harnessed. To facilitate future research, I also highlight current efforts, communities, venues, datasets, and tools. My main objective is to motivate and advocate for an Afrocentric approach to technology development. With this in mind, I recommend what technologies to build and how to build, evaluate, and deploy them based on the needs of local African communities.

Presenter: Ife Adebara, Department of Linguistics, University of British Columbia