LUHME: Language Understanding in the Human-Machine Era

The workshop programme will feature paper presentations, a discussion panel and invited talks. 

Large language models (LLMs) have revolutionized the development of interactional artificial intelligence (AI) systems by democratizing their use. These models have shown remarkable advancements in various applications such as conversational AI and machine translation, marking the undeniable advent of the human-machine era. However, despite their significant achievements, state-of-the-art systems still exhibit shortcomings in language understanding, raising questions about their true comprehension of human languages. 

Understanding language is a doubly challenging task as it necessitates not only grasping the intrinsic capabilities of LLMs but also examining their impact and requirements in real-world applications. While LLMs have shown effectiveness in various applications, the lack of supporting theories raises concerns about ethical implications, particularly in applications involving human interaction. 

The “Language Understanding in the Human-Machine Era” (LUHME) workshop aims to reignite the debate on the role of understanding in natural language use and its applications. It seeks to explore the necessity of language understanding in computational tasks like machine translation and natural language generation, as well as the contributions of language professionals in enhancing computational language understanding.