Enriching Language Models with Visually-Grounded Word Vectors and the Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms

Language models are trained only on text despite the fact that humans learn their first language in a highly interactive and multimodal environment where the first set of learned words are largely concrete, denoting physical entities and embodied states. To enrich language models with some of this missing experience, we leverage two sources of information: (1) the Lancaster Sensorimotor norms, which provide ratings (means and standard deviations) for over 40,000 English words along several dimensions of embodiment, and which capture the extent to which something is experienced across 11 different sensory modalities, and (2) vectors from coefficients of binary classifiers trained on images for the BERT vocabulary. We pre-trained the ELECTRA model and fine-tuned the RoBERTa model with these two sources of information then evaluate using the established GLUE benchmark and the Visual Dialog benchmark. We find that enriching language models with the Lancaster norms and image vectors improves results in both tasks, with some implications for robust language models that capture holistic linguistic meaning in a language learning context

Spoken Language Interaction with Robots: Recommendations for Future Research

With robotics rapidly advancing, more effective human–robot interaction is increasingly needed to realize the full potential of robots for society. While spoken language must be part of the solution, our ability to provide spoken language interaction capabilities is still very limited. In this article, based on the report of an interdisciplinary workshop convened by the National Science Foundation, we identify key scientific and engineering advances needed to enable effective spoken language interaction with robotics. We make 25 recommendations, involving eight general themes: putting human needs first, better modeling the social and interactive aspects of language, improving robustness, creating new methods for rapid adaptation, better integrating speech and language with other communication modalities, giving speech and language components access to rich representations of the robot’s current knowledge and state, making all components operate in real time, and improving research infrastructure and resources. Research and development that prioritizes these topics will, we believe, provide a solid foundation for the creation of speech-capable robots that are easy and effective for humans to work with

Fathers of Conscience: Mixed-Race Inheritance in the Antebellum South

A Look at Antebellum Legal History In Fathers of Conscience, Bernie D. Jones, Assistant Professor of Legal Studies at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, examines southern state appellate court decisions concerning the wills of white slaveholders who left property to their m...

Understanding Intention for Machine Theory of Mind: A Position Paper

Theory of Mind is often characterized as the ability to recognize desires, beliefs, and intentions of others. In this position paper, I look at the literature on modeling Theory of Mind in machines and find that, to date, intention is not usually a focus. I define what I mean by intention—choice with commitment—following prior work. Intention has a long history of research in some communities, and I offer one theoretical framework for modeling intention as a starting point. I take inspiration from how children learn intention through joint attention with others and how that leads to Theory of Mind. I argue that though models of machine Theory of Mind need not follow the same learning progression as children, intention is an aspect of Theory of Mind that should be more explicit

Joseph L. McAllister

Joseph L. McAllister, son of George. W. McAllister, was a planter from Bryan County Georgia. After the death of his father in 1850, Joseph inherited Strathy Hall, a large plantation in South-East Bryan County, and entered the ranks of the gentlemen-farmers. Then in 1861, the life of Joseph McAllister made a drastic change. With the outbreak of the American Civil war, Joseph enlisted in Confederate Service. He allow the construction of an earth fortification at Strathy Hall with the condition that the fortress built there would be named for his father, George Washington McAllister. From 1861 to 1864, Joseph participated in the defense of the city of Savannah, and in April 1862, Joseph mustered into service a company of mounted infantrymen called The Hardwicke Rifles to serve his state. Then in 1864, Joseph\u27s command was transferred to the 7th Georgia Cavalry and ordered to Virginia. It was at Trevilian Station that Joseph gave his most for his beliefs. On the 12th of June, 1864, Joseph L. McAllister died in battle bravely fighting against overwhelming odds. He is buried at Louisa Courthouse, Virginia.https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/sav-bios-lane/1204/thumbnail.jp

A Christian Telephone Crisis Intervention Manual

In our society individuals face crisis situations regularly. From the beginning of life to its conclusion in death, a spider in the bathtub or an unkind remark, life moves from one crisis to another. Some things cause small emotional disturbances while others cause permanent psychological damage. What ever the cause, no crisis is small to the person going through it, and finding the resolution can become an all-consuming task. The problem of dealing with such emergencies is not new. Every generation has had to grapple with crises