Norsk: Avansert språkforståelse og datamaskinell lingvistisk kreativitet

Given by Björn Gambäck.

The course consists of a set of regular lectures and student presentations.

NB: This is an advanced level course, open only to students that either have taken the course TDT4310 (Intelligent Text Analytics and Language Understanding/Intelligent tekstanalyse og språkforståelse), or something similar (e.g., during an exchange visit abroad), or students that are writing a Master’s Thesis within Computational Creativity.

Students that want to follow the course must thus contact the lecturer beforehand.

Based on recent advances in Large Language Models and Generative AI, the field of language understanding, generation, and analysis has moved fast forward and into the realms of computational linguistic creativity: models that can creatively both understand and generate texts in human languages. Computational Creativity as such has been claimed to be the Final Frontier of Artificial Intelligence, and aims to answer questions such as:

• How can we make computers that are creative themselves?
• How can computers understand if something is creative?
• How can computers support people in creative processes?
• How do we evaluate (computational) creativity?

The course will look at both what creativity is in general (in nature, in humans, and in computers), and specific issues related to computational creativity in fields such as language, art and music — and combinations of those fields (e.g., how a computer can compose a piece of music matching a painting or how it can produce an artefact reflecting the main content of a text), although with a specific focus on topics related to – or involving – language understanding and generation.

Course Material

The course material (lecture recordings and slides, articles, etc.) will be published in the course Teams group.

The main study material (pensum) for the course are the slides, articles and presentations.
However, several of the articles are also discussed in the book The Artist in the Machine: The World of AI-powered Creativity by Arthur I. Miller (MIT Press 2019), which thus definitely is worth checking out for those who can buy it or get access to it.

For an interview with Miller about his book and computational creativity, you can listen to "The Creative Penn" podcast.

Examination

The grading will be based on a written project report, which also should be presented to the rest of the class, with report themes selected by the students together with the lecturer.

The project can be carried out individually or in groups of two students working together.

(Prel.) Course Schedule

The course will start in week 35, on Wednesday 26.8 at 10:15-12:00 in room 242, which is on the 2nd floor of IT-bygget.

The lectures thereafter will (tentatively) be every second week at the same time and in the same place, so in room 242 at 10:15-12:00 on Wednesday 9.9, 23.9 and 7.10.

The student project presentations will tentatively be given on Wednesday 18.11, at 10:15-12:00 in room 242.

The lectures and presentations will be onsite. The lectures will possibly be available to follow also online and/or recorded (though only in case a student has valid reasons not to attend a specific lecture in person); the student presentations will be in-person only.

Visiting hour

by appointment

For more information about the course, please contact Prof. Björn Gambäck.