iSchool researchers receive best paper award at TrustNLP

Sullam Jeoung
Sullam Jeoung
Jana Diesner
Jana Diesner, Affiliate Associate Professor
Halil Kilicoglu
Halil Kilicoglu, Associate Professor

A paper coauthored by PhD student Sullam Jeoung, Associate Professor Jana Diesner, and Associate Professor Halil Kilicoglu was named Best Long Paper at TrustNLP: Third Workshop on Trustworthy Natural Language Processing, which was held in conjunction with the Annual Conference of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL 2023). In their paper, "Examining the Causal Impact of First Names on Language Models: The Case of Social Commonsense Reasoning," the researchers discuss how the use of first names in language models can impact their trustworthiness.

"Language models are increasingly used and deployed across various applications and domains that engage with users, ranging from some recent popular models such as ChatGPT and Bard to applications such as AI counseling," explained Jeoung. "As language models are used in circumstances where social intelligence and commonsense reasoning are becoming important, it is imperative to ensure the trustworthiness of language models."

Through a controlled experiment to measure the causal effect of first names on reasoning, the researchers were able to distinguish between model predictions due to chance and those caused by factors of interest. Their results indicate that the frequency of first names in a model has a direct effect on its prediction.

"Our findings suggest that to ensure model robustness, it is essential to augment datasets with more diverse first names during the configuration stage," said Jeoung.

Updated on
Backto the news archive

Related News

Desai defends dissertation

Doctoral candidate Smit Desai successfully defended his dissertation, "Designing Metaphor-fluid Voice User Interfaces," on June 10.

Smit Desai

Student says ‘thank you’ with a helicopter ride

Last month, Michael Ferrer showed his appreciation for one of his MSIM instructors in a unique way—by inviting him for an insider’s look at his work as a reservist in the Illinois Army National Guard. For the ILARNG BOSS Lift, which took place on June 18 at Camp Atterbury, Indiana, Ferrer selected Michael Wonderlich, iSchool adjunct lecturer and senior associate director of business intelligence and enterprise architecture for Administrative Information Technology Services (AITS) at the University of Illinois.

Michael Wonderlich and Michael Ferrer hold a U of I flag in front of a military helicopter

Project helps librarians use data storytelling to advocate for public libraries

A toolkit for public librarians can help them use data to communicate the value of their services and justify their funding needs. The Data Storytelling for Librarians Toolkit helps librarians present data in story form using narrative strategies. It was developed by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign information sciences professors.

Kate McDowell

Chan to deliver keynote at SIGCIS 2024

Associate Professor Anita Say Chan will deliver the keynote at the 15th annual conference of the SHOT (Society for the History of Technology) Special Interest Group for Computing, Information, and Society (SIGCIS), which will be held on July 14 in Viña del Mar, Chile. SIGCIS is the leading international group for historians with an interest in the history of information technology and its applications. The theme for SIGCIS 2024 is "System Update: Patches, Tactics, Responses."

Anita Say Chan

Mattson receives ISTE Making It Happen Award

Adjunct Lecturer Kristen Mattson has received the 2024 International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Making It Happen Award. The award honors educators and leaders who demonstrate outstanding commitment, leadership, courage, and persistence in improving digital learning opportunities for students.

Kristen Mattson