8 May: DCLRS -- Dr Tony Veale (UCD) -- Friday, May 8, 16:00 at DIT in DIT]

Dublin Computational Linguistics Research Seminar: Index of May 2015 | Dublin Computational Linguistics Research Seminar - Index of year: 2015 | Full index


Hi everyone,

the next DCLRS seminar will take place tomorrow Friday the 7th of May at
4pm. The time, venue and talk title/abstract are available below. The
seminar is open to everyone so please feel free to pass on this
announcement to anyone who may be interested.

Best regards,

john k.

Time: 4pm
Venue: K2-008 DIT Kevin Street
Speaker: Tony Veale from UCD/Adapt

Title:
--------
Twitter: The Best of Bot Worlds for Linguistic Creativity

Abstract:
----------------
To see all that is good and bad about humanity we need only look at
Twitter. Some users rise to the challenge of its 140-character message
limitation, to craft aphoristic tweets with wit, allusion and high re-use
value. Others brush-off the challenge and fill their tweets with prattle
and bile. To see all that is good and bad about the emerging field of
Computational Creativity (CC), one should also look to Twitter. Twitterbots
(where ‘bot is a common term for an autonomous software robot) are systems
that generate their own tweets for the enjoyment of human followers. No
attempt is made to hide the software basis of most bots from their
followers, though the converse is not always true, as in the case of the
now infamous @Horse_eBooks bot. This Twitterbot began as a simple
application of the cut-up method, tweeting enigmatic but largely random
gobbets of online books that were viewed by many as oddly poetic. Having
attracted over 200,000 followers, the bot was sold to an artist who
exploited its popularity, but compromised its autonomy, to distribute
hand-crafted marketing materials. The outrage that ensued shows that modern
Web users still appreciate the outputs of autonomous systems in a very
different way to those generated by humans. The mechanical provenance of
the creative output is a key part of its appeal, and an important dimension
in its evaluation. One is reminded of Samuel Johnson’s quip about dogs who
can stand on their hind legs: “It is not done well; but you are surprised
to find it done at all.” It is worth noting that Johnson addressed his quip
to the topic of “a woman’s preaching”, a topic that now (rightly) raises no
eyebrows at all. Perhaps the same will be said of the “preaching” of CC
bots in years to come.

This is not to say that most Twitterbots are creative CC Twitterbots,
as most fall into the traps of mere generation or pastiche. Almost all
employ the cut-up method of the beat poets in a non-reflective mode, to
generate textual mash-ups that meet some formal constraints but about whose
meaning or contextual aptness the system has no real insight. Nonetheless,
the Washington Post has recently described the Twitterbot as an emerging
new mode of conceptual art, noting that “the idea of using Twitter as a
medium for serious art and social commentary has increasingly caught on
with a ragtag group of conceptual writers, generative poets, and
performance artists.” This talk focuses on the NLP techniques and resources
needed to avoid the traps of unreflective bots, to construct Twitterbots of
real linguistic and conceptual substance.

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Dublin Computational Linguistics Research Seminar - Index of May 2015 | Index of year: 2015 | Full index