Leaving the Lab: Building NLP Applications that Real People can Use

摘要

There is a chasm between an NLP technology that works well in the research lab and something that works for applications that real people use. Research conditions are often theoretical or idealized. The first time they contribute to industry projects, many theoretical researchers are surprised to discover how much goes into building outside the lab, and how hard it is to build data products for real people ethically and transparently. This talk explores my NLP journey in three stages: working as an academic NLP researcher, learning to be a practical creator of NLP products in industry, and becoming the founding CEO of an NLP business. While each role has used my background in computational linguistics in essential ways, every step has also required me to learn and unlearn new things along the way. The further I have gone in my industry career, the more critical it has become to define and work within a well-established set of principles for data ethics. This talk is for academic researchers considering industry careers or collaborations, for people in industry who started out in academia, and for anyone on either side of the divide who wants to make NLP products that real people can use.