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[taunt]Most things that I hear about natural language processing boil down to a bunch of codemonkeying assumers trying to oversimplify linguistic phenomena that

[taunt]Most things that I hear about natural language processing boil down to a bunch of codemonkeying assumers trying to oversimplify linguistic phenomena that they are completely ignorant about, and yet trying to sell it as if it was the next best thing after sliced bread.[/taunt] Anyway. There are three things that NLP is notoriously bad at: 1. Using world knowledge to interpret utterances in a given context. The article itself provides a neat example of that with United-Statian presidents. 2. Contextualisation that goes beyond the text that the utterance is found in. 3. Assessing the pragmatic purpose of an utterance. But of course, "linguistics is useless for NLP!", the codemonkeys say.

Der_Einzige 4y ago
No, it unironically IS useless. You're welcome to bark up the symbolic tree along with Chomsky, Gary Marcus, and others who are about to fade into obscurity. Or you can embrace the bitter lesson, which is that symbolic techniques are considered harmful, like the future winners of the AI race have: http://www.incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html http://www.incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html
- lvxferre 4y ago
  I could evoke Brandolini's Law on this one, but for the sake of other posters, I won't. >No, it unironically IS useless. There's an example of why Linguistics isn't useless in _the very comment that you're replying to_: pragmatics. That is, modelling the _purpose_ of an utterance is essential to process it. Without that pragmatic modelling, I believe that NLP will keep failing to deliver what it should, and it'll continue being just a cute toy to keep codemonkeys busy with their blackboxes. Granted, I may be wrong (I'm not stupid to claim certainty over the future), but I do not think that I am. >You're welcome to bark up the symbolic tree along with Chomsky, Gary Marcus, and others who are about to fade into obscurity. Damn, could you lend me that crystal ball that allows you to claim certainty over the future?* It's perfectly possible that they fade into obscurity. It's also perfectly possible that they get hailed as heroes of language processing. Or anything in between. We, in 2022, are in no position to know it. The same applies to any other linguist that is interested on natural language processing. Specifically on Chomsky. He often spouts some stupid reductionist shit and, paradoxically, unnecessary complexity to keep that reductionism intact. Even then, his approach looks saner than "NEEDZ MOAR NODES X-D". >Or you can embrace the bitter lesson "If I say so then you should accept it" is not a valid argument, sorry. >which is that symbolic techniques are considered harmful, like the future winners of the AI race have Another instance of "I KNOW THE FUTURE! CHRUST MEEEE" through your comment... Checking the link, >The ultimate reason for this is Moore's law It's already common knowledge that Moore's Law is dead, and brute force only goes so far. *That specific sentence is a great example highlighting the role of pragmatics. Humans can easily get what I did there; NLP should too, but it doesn't.
- avgcorrection 4y ago
  Chomsky has been saying that the way to do what we call AI is with statistics since about approximately before you were born. People wanted him to use his grammar ideas to research AI in the 50’s but he declined because he was interested in linguistics, not stats. Not sure why you criticize a man for having different research interests than you in a completely different field.
  - lvxferre 4y ago
    In the kindest interpretation of what he said, he might be referring to people trying to use Chomsky's ideas for AI language processing (plenty do), and implicitly restricting that "nobody will remember him" when it comes to this specific subject. (X-Bar will haunt us forever. /s) But that's just me hoping, that there's anything worthwhile in the comment that you're replying to.

Der_Einzige 4y ago

No, it unironically IS useless. You're welcome to bark up the symbolic tree along with Chomsky, Gary Marcus, and others who are about to fade into obscurity. Or you can embrace the bitter lesson, which is that symbolic techniques are considered harmful, like the future winners of the AI race have: http://www.incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html http://www.incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html

lvxferre 4y ago
I could evoke Brandolini's Law on this one, but for the sake of other posters, I won't. >No, it unironically IS useless. There's an example of why Linguistics isn't useless in _the very comment that you're replying to_: pragmatics. That is, modelling the _purpose_ of an utterance is essential to process it. Without that pragmatic modelling, I believe that NLP will keep failing to deliver what it should, and it'll continue being just a cute toy to keep codemonkeys busy with their blackboxes. Granted, I may be wrong (I'm not stupid to claim certainty over the future), but I do not think that I am. >You're welcome to bark up the symbolic tree along with Chomsky, Gary Marcus, and others who are about to fade into obscurity. Damn, could you lend me that crystal ball that allows you to claim certainty over the future?* It's perfectly possible that they fade into obscurity. It's also perfectly possible that they get hailed as heroes of language processing. Or anything in between. We, in 2022, are in no position to know it. The same applies to any other linguist that is interested on natural language processing. Specifically on Chomsky. He often spouts some stupid reductionist shit and, paradoxically, unnecessary complexity to keep that reductionism intact. Even then, his approach looks saner than "NEEDZ MOAR NODES X-D". >Or you can embrace the bitter lesson "If I say so then you should accept it" is not a valid argument, sorry. >which is that symbolic techniques are considered harmful, like the future winners of the AI race have Another instance of "I KNOW THE FUTURE! CHRUST MEEEE" through your comment... Checking the link, >The ultimate reason for this is Moore's law It's already common knowledge that Moore's Law is dead, and brute force only goes so far. *That specific sentence is a great example highlighting the role of pragmatics. Humans can easily get what I did there; NLP should too, but it doesn't.
avgcorrection 4y ago
Chomsky has been saying that the way to do what we call AI is with statistics since about approximately before you were born. People wanted him to use his grammar ideas to research AI in the 50’s but he declined because he was interested in linguistics, not stats. Not sure why you criticize a man for having different research interests than you in a completely different field.
- lvxferre 4y ago
  In the kindest interpretation of what he said, he might be referring to people trying to use Chomsky's ideas for AI language processing (plenty do), and implicitly restricting that "nobody will remember him" when it comes to this specific subject. (X-Bar will haunt us forever. /s) But that's just me hoping, that there's anything worthwhile in the comment that you're replying to.