I enjoyed listening to NLP Linguist Dr. Emily Bender of the University of Washington on the latest Rasa Chats podcast.
Why it’s interesting
Dr. Bender recalls a discussion at a conference where the Bender Rule as it came to be called was coined by her colleagues. The Bender Rule, referring to Bender asking the question in each session where it wasn’t explicitly stated, requires NLP practitioners to state the language of the data set used when making claims about research.
Why we care
Why specificity matters quite a bit from the perspective of a technical linguist is a welcome critical insight I don’t hear often in commercial Natural Language Processing.
Dr. Bender’s plain-spoken, funny, and firm in her discussion of why a seemingly simple comment can make commercial AI researchers and engineers uncomfortable, even if it’s a hard technical requirement.
Let’s have a conversation
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