Overview
Project Team
Publications
Software
Project funded by the National Science Foundation (IIS-1320538)
PI: Jordan Boyd-Graber,
Co-PI: Hal Daumé III,
University of Maryland
The goal of this project is to create algorithms that can “think on their feet”, i.e. to incrementally process input and to decide when enough information has been received to act on those data. This research requires innovation in two areas: content models (to make accurate predictions, even when not all available information is available) and policies (to know when to trust the outputs of the content models---or know they won't get better---versus waiting for more information).
We are applying these models to two problems: synchronous machine translation (or "machine simultaneous interpretation") and question answering (when questions are revealed one piece at a time).
Synchronous machine translation is when a sentence is being produced one word at a time in a foreign language and we want to produce a translation in English simultaneously (i.e., with as little delay between a foreign language word and its English translation). In the machine translation setting, the content model predicts what words are going to appear in the input stream, even though they might not have been seen yet. This is particularly important in verb-final languages like German or Japanese, where an English translation can barely begin until the verb is seen. For the simultaneous translation problem, our content model must predict unseen elements of the sentence (e.g., the main verb in German and Japanese, or relative clauses in Japanese, or post-positions in Japanese). The job of the policy is to decide when to trust the content prediction. It must learn to balance incorrect translation versus timely translations, and must use those predictions to translate the sentence.
For question answering, we use a specially designed dataset that challenges humans: a trivia game called quiz bowl. These questions are written so that they can be interrupted by someone who knows more about the answer; that is, harder clues are at the start of the question and easier clues are at the end of the question. The content model produces guesses of what the answer could be and the policy must decide when to accept the guess.
Quiz bowl is a fun game with excellent opportunities for outreach, but it is also related to core challenges in natural language processing: classification (sorting inputs and making predictions), discourse (using pragmatic clues to guess what will come next), and coreference resolution (knowing which entities are discussed from oblique mentions).
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Jordan Boyd-Graber Assistant Professor, Computer Science (Maryland) |
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Hal Daumé III Associate Professor, Computer Science (Maryland) |
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Danny Bouman Undergraduate student, Computer Science (BS 2014, Maryland) |
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Leonardo Claudino Ph.D. student, Computer Science (Maryland) |
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Shi Feng Ph.D. student, Computer Science (Maryland) |
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Anupam Guha Ph.D. student, Computer Science (Maryland) |
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Alvin Grissom II Ph.D. student, Computer Science (Colorado) |
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He He Ph.D. student, Computer Science (Maryland) |
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Stephanie Hwa Undergraduate student, Computer Science (BS 2014, Maryland) |
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Mohit Iyyer Ph.D. student, Computer Science (Maryland) |
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John Morgan MS student, Computer Science (Maryland) |
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Khanh Nguyen Ph.D. student, Computer Science (Maryland) |
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Pedro Rodriguez Ph.D. student, Computer Science (Colorado) |
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Davis Yoshida MS student, Computer Science (BS 2016, MS 2017, Colorado) |
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@inproceedings{Iyyer:Manjunatha:Guha:Vyas:Boyd-Graber:Daume-III:Davis-2017, Title = {The Amazing Mysteries of the Gutter: Drawing Inferences Between Panels in Comic Book Narratives}, Author = {Mohit Iyyer and Varun Manjunatha and Anupam Guha and Yogarshi Vyas and Jordan Boyd-Graber and Hal {Daum\'{e} III} and Larry Davis}, Booktitle = {Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition}, Year = {2017}, Url = {http://cs.umd.edu/~jbg//docs/2017_cvpr_comics.pdf}, }
@inproceedings{Iyyer:Manjunatha:Guha:Vyas:Boyd-Graber:Daume-III:Davis-2017, Title = {The Amazing Mysteries of the Gutter: Drawing Inferences Between Panels in Comic Book Narratives}, Author = {Mohit Iyyer and Varun Manjunatha and Anupam Guha and Yogarshi Vyas and Jordan Boyd-Graber and Hal {Daum\'{e} III} and Larry Davis}, Booktitle = {Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition}, Year = {2017}, Url = {http://cs.umd.edu/~jbg//docs/2017_cvpr_comics.pdf}, }
@inproceedings{Nguyen:Boyd-Graber:Daume-III-2017, Title = {Reinforcement Learning for Bandit Neural Machine Translation with Simulated Human Feedback}, Author = {Khanh Nguyen and Jordan Boyd-Graber and Hal {Daum\'{e} III}}, Booktitle = {Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing}, Year = {2017}, Location = {Copenhagen, Denmark}, Url = {http://cs.umd.edu/~jbg//docs/2017_emnlp_bandit_mt.pdf}, }
@inproceedings{Grissom-II:Orita:Boyd-Graber-2016, Title = {Incremental Prediction of Sentence-final Verbs}, Author = {Alvin {Grissom II} and Naho Orita and Jordan Boyd-Graber}, Booktitle = {Conference on Computational Natural Language Learning}, Year = {2016}, Location = {Berlin, Germany}, Url = {http://cs.umd.edu/~jbg//docs/2016_conll_verbpred.pdf}, }
@inproceedings{He:Boyd-Graber:Kwok:Daume-III-2016, Title = {Opponent Modeling in Deep Reinforcement Learning}, Author = {He He and Jordan Boyd-Graber and Kevin Kwok and Hal {Daum\'{e} III}}, Booktitle = {International Conference on Machine Learning}, Year = {2016}, Location = {New York, NY}, Url = {http://cs.umd.edu/~jbg//docs/2016_icml_opponent.pdf}, }
@inproceedings{Guha:Iyyer:Boyd-Graber-2016, Title = {A Distorted Skull Lies in the Bottom Center: Identifying Paintings from Text Descriptions}, Author = {Anupam Guha and Mohit Iyyer and Jordan Boyd-Graber}, Booktitle = {NAACL Human-Computer Question Answering Workshop}, Year = {2016}, Location = {San Diego, CA}, Url = {http://cs.umd.edu/~jbg//docs/2016_naacl_paintings.pdf}, }
@inproceedings{Iyyer:Guha:Chaturvedi:Boyd-Graber:Daume-III-2016, Title = {Feuding Families and Former Friends: Unsupervised Learning for Dynamic Fictional Relationships}, Author = {Mohit Iyyer and Anupam Guha and Snigdha Chaturvedi and Jordan Boyd-Graber and Hal {Daum\'{e} III}}, Booktitle = {North American Association for Computational Linguistics}, Year = {2016}, Location = {San Diego, CA}, Url = {http://cs.umd.edu/~jbg//docs/2016_naacl_relationships.pdf}, }
@inproceedings{He:Boyd-Graber:Daume-III-2016, Title = {Interpretese vs. Translationese: The Uniqueness of Human Strategies in Simultaneous Interpretation}, Author = {He He and Jordan Boyd-Graber and Hal {Daum\'{e} III}}, Booktitle = {North American Association for Computational Linguistics}, Year = {2016}, Location = {San Diego, CA}, Url = {http://cs.umd.edu/~jbg//docs/2016_naacl_interpretese.pdf}, }
@inproceedings{Iyyer:Manjunatha:Boyd-Graber:Daume-III-2015, Title = {Deep Unordered Composition Rivals Syntactic Methods for Text Classification}, Author = {Mohit Iyyer and Varun Manjunatha and Jordan Boyd-Graber and Hal {Daum\'{e} III}}, Booktitle = {Association for Computational Linguistics}, Year = {2015}, Location = {Beijing, China}, Url = {http://cs.umd.edu/~jbg//docs/2015_acl_dan.pdf}, }
@inproceedings{Niculae:Kumar:Boyd-Graber:Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil-2015, Title = {Linguistic Harbingers of Betrayal: A Case Study on an Online Strategy Game}, Author = {Vlad Niculae and Srijan Kumar and Jordan Boyd-Graber and Cristian Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil}, Booktitle = {Association for Computational Linguistics}, Year = {2015}, Location = {Beijing, China}, Url = {http://cs.umd.edu/~jbg//docs/2015_acl_diplomacy.pdf}, }
Accessible Abstract: This paper introduces the application of natural language processing techniques to understand the relationships (and their dissolution) in the game of Diplomacy. This popular board game simulates Europe at the eve of World War I and forces players to work with each other to forge alliances and make plans together. However, the game's setup also encourages players to turn against each other. This paper analyzes whether we can predict these betrayals (we can!) and the linguistic and social phenomena (demands, politeness, and planning) that can predict when a betrayal will happen.
@inproceedings{He:Grissom-II:Boyd-Graber:Daume-III-2015, Title = {Syntax-based Rewriting for Simultaneous Machine Translation}, Author = {He He and Alvin {Grissom II} and Jordan Boyd-Graber and Hal {Daum\'{e} III}}, Booktitle = {Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing}, Year = {2015}, Location = {Lisbon, Portugal}, Url = {http://cs.umd.edu/~jbg//docs/2015_emnlp_rewrite.pdf}, }
@inproceedings{Boyd-Graber:Iyyer:He:Daume-III-2015, Title = {Interactive Incremental Question Answering}, Author = {Jordan Boyd-Graber and Mohit Iyyer and He He and Hal {Daum\'{e} III}}, Booktitle = {Neural Information Processing Systems}, Year = {2015}, Location = {Montreal, Canada}, }
@inproceedings{Guha:Iyyer:Bouman:Boyd-Graber-2015, Title = {Removing the Training Wheels: A Coreference Dataset that Entertains Humans and Challenges Computers}, Author = {Anupam Guha and Mohit Iyyer and Danny Bouman and Jordan Boyd-Graber}, Booktitle = {North American Association for Computational Linguistics}, Year = {2015}, Location = {Denver, Colorado}, Url = {http://cs.umd.edu/~jbg//docs/2015_naacl_qb_coref.pdf}, }
@inproceedings{Iyyer:Boyd-Graber:Claudino:Socher:Daume-III-2014, Title = {A Neural Network for Factoid Question Answering over Paragraphs}, Author = {Mohit Iyyer and Jordan Boyd-Graber and Leonardo Claudino and Richard Socher and Hal {Daum\'{e} III}}, Booktitle = {Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing}, Year = {2014}, Location = {Doha, Qatar}, Url = {http://cs.umd.edu/~jbg//docs/2014_emnlp_qb_rnn.pdf}, }
@inproceedings{Grissom-II:He:Boyd-Graber:Morgan:Daume-III-2014, Title = {Don't Until the Final Verb Wait: Reinforcement Learning for Simultaneous Machine Translation}, Author = {Alvin {Grissom II} and He He and Jordan Boyd-Graber and John Morgan and Hal {Daum\'{e} III}}, Booktitle = {Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing}, Year = {2014}, Location = {Doha, Qatar}, Url = {http://cs.umd.edu/~jbg//docs/2014_emnlp_simtrans.pdf}, }
@inproceedings{Iyyer:Boyd-Graber:Daume-III-2014, Title = {Generating Sentences from Semantic Vector Space Representations}, Author = {Mohit Iyyer and Jordan Boyd-Graber and Hal {Daum\'{e} III}}, Booktitle = {NIPS Workshop on Learning Semantics}, Year = {2014}, Location = {Montreal, Canada}, }
@inproceedings{Boyd-Graber:Satinoff:He:Daume-III-2012, Title = {Besting the Quiz Master: Crowdsourcing Incremental Classification Games}, Author = {Jordan Boyd-Graber and Brianna Satinoff and He He and Hal {Daum\'{e} III}}, Booktitle = {Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing}, Year = {2012}, Url = {http://cs.umd.edu/~jbg//docs/qb_emnlp_2012.pdf}, Location = {Jeju, South Korea}, }
@online{Boyd-Graber:Rodriguez:Murphy:Hentzel-2017, Author = {Jordan Boyd-Graber and Pedro Rodriguez and Nathan Murphy and R. Hentzel}, Year = {2017}, Title = {QANTA vs. Quiz Bowl Veterans}, Location = {Atlanta, GA}, Url = {https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYFqMINXayc}, }
@online{Boyd-Graber:Rodriguez:Murphy:Hentzel-2017, Author = {Jordan Boyd-Graber and Pedro Rodriguez and Nathan Murphy and R. Hentzel}, Year = {2017}, Title = {QANTA vs. Quiz Bowl Veterans}, Location = {Atlanta, GA}, Url = {https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYFqMINXayc}, }
@online{Brachfeld-2017, Author = {Melissa Brachfeld}, Journal = {UMIACS}, Year = {2017}, Title = {UMD Computerized System Beats Human Quiz Bowl Team at Atlanta Exhibition}, Url = {https://www.umiacs.umd.edu/about-us/news/umd-computerized-system-beats-human-quiz-bowl-team-atlanta-exhibition}, }
@online{Yamada:Boyd-Graber:Iyyer-2016, Author = {Ikuya Yamada and Jordan Boyd-Graber and Mohit Iyyer}, Year = {2016}, Title = {OUSIA vs. California NASAT Team}, Location = {San Diego, CA}, Url = {https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQHo7BApgAU&index=2&list=PLegWUnz91WfscfMYZvuSWEweBbIpfFDlF}, }
@online{Yamada:Boyd-Graber:Iyyer-2016, Author = {Ikuya Yamada and Jordan Boyd-Graber and Mohit Iyyer}, Year = {2016}, Title = {OUSIA vs. California NASAT Team}, Location = {San Diego, CA}, Url = {https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQHo7BApgAU&index=2&list=PLegWUnz91WfscfMYZvuSWEweBbIpfFDlF}, }
@online{Boyd-Graber:Murphy:Hentzel-2016, Author = {Jordan Boyd-Graber and Nathan Murphy and R. Hentzel}, Year = {2016}, Title = {QANTA vs. Quiz Bowl Veterans}, Location = {Dallas, TX}, Url = {https://www.youtube.com/c2kGD1EdfFw}, }
@article{Mani-2016, Author = {Inderjeet Mani}, Year = {2016}, Title = {When robots read books}, Journal = {Aeon}, Url = {https://aeon.co/essays/how-ai-is-revolutionising-the-role-of-the-literary-critic}, }
@article{Mani-2016, Author = {Inderjeet Mani}, Year = {2016}, Title = {When robots read books}, Journal = {Aeon}, Url = {https://aeon.co/essays/how-ai-is-revolutionising-the-role-of-the-literary-critic}, }
@article{Dormehl-2016, Author = {Luke Dormehl}, Year = {2016}, Title = {Like parents from the 1950s, AI still can't understand comics. Here's why}, Journal = {Digital Trends}, Url = {http://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/comic-book-ai/}, }
@article{Gorman-2016, Author = {Katherine Gorman}, Year = {2016}, Title = {Automatic Translation and t-SNE}, Journal = {Talking Machines}, Url = {http://www.thetalkingmachines.com/episodes/automatic-translation-and-t-sne}, }
@article{Chabris-2016, Author = {Christopher Chabris}, Year = {2016}, Title = {Game On: The Psychology of Betrayal}, Journal = {Wall Street Journal}, Url = {http://www.wsj.com/articles/when-diplomacy-leads-to-betrayal-1455897078}, }
@online{Boyd-Graber:Iyyer:Hentzel-2015, Author = {Jordan Boyd-Graber and Mohit Iyyer and R. Hentzel}, Year = {2015}, Title = {QANTA vs. Jeopardy Champions}, Location = {Chicago, IL}, Url = {https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqsUaprYMOw}, }
@online{Boyd-Graber:Jennings:Smith-2015, Author = {Jordan Boyd-Graber and Ken Jennings and Noah Smith}, Year = {2015}, Title = {QANTA vs. Ken Jennings}, Location = {Seattle, WA}, Url = {https://www.youtube.com/kTXJCEvCDYk}, }
@online{Boyd-Graber-2015, Author = {Jordan Boyd-Graber}, Year = {2015}, Title = {Thinking on your Feet: Reinforcement Learning for Incremental Language Tasks}, Location = {Yandex Berlin}, Url = {https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YArUk9QcMe0}, }
@article{Dahl-2015, Author = {Melissa Dahl}, Year = {2015}, Title = {Should you worry about people who are too polite?}, Journal = {CNN}, Url = {http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/31/health/beware-polite-people/}, }
@article{Adams-2015, Author = {Emily Adams}, Year = {2015}, Title = {Professor's Quiz Bowl Robot Goes Head-To-Head With Humans}, Journal = {Colorado Computer Science Newsletter}, Url = {http://www.diamondbackonline.com/news/umd-researchers-computer-beats-jeopardy-star-ken-jennings-at-trivia/article_133f05f4-75d9-11e5-9c00-8718fca7f4ec.html}, }
@article{Eichensehr-2015, Author = {Morgan Eichensehr}, Year = {2015}, Title = {STUDY: Changes in language, tone could reveal impending betrayal}, Journal = {Diamondback}, Url = {http://www.diamondbackonline.com/news/study-changes-in-language-tone-could-reveal-impending-betrayal/article_a4da0a7c-50f4-11e5-80d6-030e2fec745c.html}, }
@article{Schapitl-2015, Author = {Lexie Schapitl}, Year = {2015}, Title = {UMD researchers' computer beats 'Jeopardy!' star Ken Jennings at trivia}, Journal = {Diamondback}, Url = {http://www.diamondbackonline.com/news/umd-researchers-computer-beats-jeopardy-star-ken-jennings-at-trivia/article_133f05f4-75d9-11e5-9c00-8718fca7f4ec.html}, }
@article{Schapitl-2015, Author = {Lexie Schapitl}, Year = {2015}, Title = {UMD researchers' computer beats 'Jeopardy!' star Ken Jennings at trivia}, Journal = {Diamondback}, Url = {http://www.diamondbackonline.com/news/umd-researchers-computer-beats-jeopardy-star-ken-jennings-at-trivia/article_133f05f4-75d9-11e5-9c00-8718fca7f4ec.html}, }
@article{Weingus-2015, Author = {Leigh Weingus}, Year = {2015}, Title = {What You Should Know About Really Polite People}, Journal = {Huffington Post}, Url = {http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/polite-people-more-likely-to-betray_55e06f5ae4b0b7a96338a186}, }
@article{Dahl-2015, Author = {Melissa Dahl}, Year = {2015}, Title = {Here's a Good Reason to Be Wary of Overly Polite People}, Journal = {New York Magazine}, Url = {http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2015/08/good-reason-to-be-wary-of-overly-polite-people.html?mid=twitter_nymag}, }
@article{Collins-2015, Author = {Nathan Collins}, Year = {2015}, Title = {Detecting a Coming Betrayal}, Journal = {Pacific Standard}, Url = {http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/diplomacy-detecting-a-coming-betrayal}, }
@article{Steele-2015, Author = {Bill Steele}, Year = {2015}, Title = {Language analysis predicts a coming betrayal}, Journal = {Phys.org}, Url = {http://phys.org/news/2015-08-language-analysis-betrayal.html}, }
@article{Ehrenberg-2015, Author = {Rachel Ehrenberg}, Year = {2015}, Title = {A few key signs betray betrayal}, Journal = {Science News}, Url = {https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/culture-beaker/few-key-signs-betray-betrayal?mode=blog&context=159}, }
@article{Ehrenberg-2015, Author = {Rachel Ehrenberg}, Year = {2015}, Title = {A few key signs betray betrayal}, Journal = {Science News}, Url = {https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/culture-beaker/few-key-signs-betray-betrayal?mode=blog&context=159}, }
@article{Farrell-2015, Author = {Liam Farrell}, Year = {2015}, Title = {Question-Answering System Built by UMD, UC Boulder Bests Ken Jennings}, Journal = {Terp}, Url = {http://terp.umd.edu/what-is-a-jeopardy-worthy-computer#.Vh2ts7R_NBc}, }
@article{-2015, Year = {2015}, Title = {Question: Which language scientists designed first competitive quiz bowl playing NLP system?}, Journal = {UMD Language Science Newsletter}, Url = {https://languagescience.umd.edu/news/question-which-language-scientists-designed-first-competitive-quiz-bowl-playing-nlp-system}, }
@article{Brachfeld-2015, Author = {Melissa Brachfeld}, Year = {2015}, Title = {Computerized Question-Answering System Built by UMD, UC Boulder Bests "Jeopardy!" Champion}, Journal = {UMIACS}, Url = {https://www.umiacs.umd.edu/about-us/news/computerized-question-answering-system-built-umd-uc-boulder-bests-%E2%80%9Cjeopardy%E2%80%9D-champion}, }
@article{Brachfeld-2015, Author = {Melissa Brachfeld}, Year = {2015}, Title = {Computerized Question-Answering System Built by UMD, UC Boulder Bests "Jeopardy!" Champion}, Journal = {UMIACS}, Url = {https://www.umiacs.umd.edu/about-us/news/computerized-question-answering-system-built-umd-uc-boulder-bests-%E2%80%9Cjeopardy%E2%80%9D-champion}, }
This work is supported by the National Science Foundation. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the researchers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.