The Roadmap goes ever on and onDown from the institute where it began.Now far ahead the Roadmap has gone,And we must follow, if we can,Pursuing it with eager feet,Until it joins some larger wayWhere many paths and errands meet.And whither then? I cannot say.
Frodo’s song, free after J.R.R. Tolkien
HLT-ROADMAPPINGthe Low Lands and Europe
• Antal van den Bosch– Language technology– Machine Learning– Tilburg University
• Arjan van Hessen– Speech technology– Twente University– Telecats
HLT ROADMAPS, THEN AND NOW
• HLT roadmaps in the Low Countries & EU– Then, now, plans for the future
• HLT: broadly or narrowly speaking?– Overlap with HCI, AI– Application areas: Health, security, gaming– Software engineering– Whither fundamental research?
• New roadmaps– In the African context
ROADMAP (TECHNOLOGY)
Fundamental HLT
HLTPilots
HLTApplications
Machine Learning
Emotion detection
Image processing
Database Technology
Information Retrieval
Workflow systems
PABX
Education control
Serious gaming
ROADMAP (PARTNERS)
Fundamental HLT
HLTPilots
HLTApplications
Users
1990-2000
• Strong focus on academic research.• Collaboration of academia with the research
departments of some (big) industries
ResourcesCelex (1986 – 2001)Batavo (2000)Corpus Spoken Dutch (1998-2004)Twente News Corpus (1998 - )
Infrastructure & NetworkingElsnet (1991 – 2004)NOTaS (2000 - )
Fundamental LST-researchSPIN (NL 1988-1994)TST (NL 1995-2000)Korte Termijn Programma’s (FL)
RESEARCHSignal processing
Speech processing
Phonetic research
G2P
Parsing
Semantic web
2000-2010
• Technology becomes mature and useful• Applications move from the academic labs to
industrial labs, (commercial) pilots and real world applications.
• Because basic HLT starts to work, “adjacent” technologies become interested too!
• Scientific programs reflect these developments: industrial partners are moving in
2000-2010Programme Description Sponsors
IOP-MMI(1999-2009)
Man-Machine Interaction
IMIX (2002-2008)
Interactive Multimodal Information eXtraction
CATCH (2004-2008)
Continuous Access to Cultural Heritage
CATCH Plus (2008-2010)
Transfer from CATCH-research CATCH-applications
CATCH II (2008-2012)
Moving from Cultural Heritage Humanities
MultimediaN(2002-2008)
Solving fundamental questions of Multi-mediaN
STEVIN (2005-2011)
Dutch-Flemish Research Programme for Dutch Language and Speech Technology
CURRENT STATE & NEAR FUTURE
• Because HLT is “working” (although not perfect), less money is available for fundamental HLT-research– Tendency to stress what already works is strengthened
by valorisation demands • HLT is used as an enabling technology– In various application areas (education, cure&care,
humanities, governmental structures, safety, etc)• In most new (National AND International)
programmes, HLT is part of the research: not the main part of it!– Again, tendency to stress what already works, to be a
useful partner
FROM TECHNOLOGY TO CLIENTS
BE PREPARED
• As an HLT community, be prepared to step into other large initiatives
• In other areas, such as– Occasional national funding possibilities– Multidisciplinary opportunities
• With social sciences, life sciences, exact sciences, humanities
• E.g. NWO: three areas, large-scale– Resource / infrastructure funds
• NWO Groot / Middelgroot• Hercules• ESFRI
SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
There is a substantial gap between
• Academic hacking and• Real software development
– Software architecture design– Choices of frameworks,
standards, languages– Programming– Unit testing and quality
control– Release– Bug reporting– Maintenance
WHITHER FUNDAMENTAL RESEARCH?
• HLT shares fundaments with– AI, HCI, cognitive science– [applied|theoretical|socio|psycho] linguistics– We share some deep, fundamental challenges
• If we want to continue being innovative, we NEED to tie in with– Reasoning, planning, & search– Common sense & world knowledge– Human factors in HCI
• Else, we stop being a field of innovation
A FRESH ROADMAP
• For South Africa– Learning from past: Low Countries / EU– Some fundamental choices:
• Alliances with other fields• Software, resources• Fundamental research goals
– Utilizing current initiatives• NHN (http://www.meraka.org.za/nhn)• AfLaT (http://www.aflat.org)• ALT-I (http://www.alt-i.org)• Bisharat (http://www.bisharat.net)• Anloc (http://www.africanlocalisation.net)
THE AFRICAN CONTEXT
• Language technology researchers for African languages over the continent face typical, similar problems:– Complex morphology– Noun classes– Encoding– Tonality– Resource-scarceness
• But no central point to access information (e.g. links, forums, publications)
• 1 central resource point might improve visibility of African Language Technology
AFLAT.ORG
• Community-driven portal dedicated to language (and speech) technology for African languages
• Share information (own work, interesting links to other people’s works)
• Backbone = drupal content management
DEVELOPMENTS
Spoken Command&Control
Dictation in controlled environments
Traintable informationWhen both hands are needed
DEVELOPMENTS
Spelling control
Lip reading
Educational softwareAutomatic summarization
Translation software
Searching in large audio-data
REAL WORLD APPLICATIONS
Zorg, care en cure, open democracy, education, heritage,
Bio food,
Road map coming from stevin demo
ORAL HISTORY
Buchenwald
digitalized(historic) collections
H.M. KoninginWilhelmina
Digital recorded collections
Second Feministic Wave
Memories of Indonesia
SPOKEN AND WRITTEN SELF SERVICE
Getting your daily newspaper if it was not delivered,
by identifying yourself over the telephone (Speech Recog)
In the evening the “newspaper” is calling you to
ask if everything is ok.If not, a human is taking over.
SPEECH ANALITICS
What is the reason you are of calling us?
Analyzing 40K calls/per day in call centres,
to tell the management why people are calling.
REAL WORLD APPLICATIONS
• GemeenteConnect: asking questions to your local authorities
• Q-A on the web: asking questions in a “natural way”
• HLT for dyslectic children (6 – 12 year)• Monitoring elderly patients by Q-A over the
phone• 48 other RW application recently described
CURRENT STATE
• The economic potential and societal importance of language and speech technologies in Services and ICT– In information and communication, people are naturally drawn
to the means that nature gave them to express messages in natural language, and to understand the messages of others.
– While having embraced the computer and new ICT technologies, and having acquired the ability to use the mouse and the desktop metaphor, people still have complex desires and questions that remain best expressed in the form of words.
– In order to offer their services in a maximally effective way, it is vital that computers step up from their current “silent” state into being talking and understanding “intelligent systems”.
QUESTIONS?•Why collaborate Low Countries and South Africa?•What’s in for me/you•Roadmap, but to what?•Economic efficiency, social issues, educational issues?
