Culturally Aware Machines: Why and when are they useful?

Abstract: Language, culture, and technology are deeply intertwined; any technology that aims to process or generate language must have a nuanced understanding of culture. Yet, culture is elusive, often defying concrete definition, which poses a profound challenge to natural language processing (NLP) and AI research. In this talk, I will ask and attempt to answer the following three questions: (1) What can we do better with AI systems that are culturally aware? (2) Why is modeling culture so complex, and what can we learn from psychology and anthropology? (3) How can LLMs, in turn, be leveraged as tools for studying and enhancing our understanding of cultures? I will illustrate many of the challenges and potential solutions through Project “Culturally Yours,” in which we build a personalized cross-cultural reading assistant starting with culture as a prior for personalization.