Cohere For AI - Guest Speaker: Hellina Hailu Nigatu, PhD Student

Description: Many of the worlds languages–and by extension their communities–remain understudied and under-served. A common reason for this gap is the lack of data available for low-resourced languages. In this talk, I will cover (1) what challenges prevent low-resourced language speakers from contributing to online platforms and (2) what direct downstream impact the lack of research and tools for these languages causes to the community. For the first half, we will look at Wikipedia contributors and their experiences. In the second half, we will focus on YouTube users and how they navigate policy violating content. The talk will feature recommendations and design opportunities for NLP researchers, stakeholders, and platforms. 

Bio: I am a PhD student at the University of California, Berkeley in the EECS department. My research interest broadly lies in the intersection of AI and HCI, with a focus on making usable Language Technologies for languages with limited available data. I am also interested in how these tools impact society, specifically in how it affects Global Majority countries and communities.