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I2SC Lecture Series (Recording): Asmelash Teka Hadgu (Low-resource NLP, Lesan AI / DAIR), Beyond AI Hype: Building Machine Learning Systems that Serve Communities

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Date : April 25, 2025 Abstract : Technological advancement, particularly Artificial Intelligence, is often accompanied by significant hype and grand promises. But who do these technologies serve? I will motivate this talk by conducting a reality check of current technologies, such as chatbots, social media platforms, search engines, and knowledge bases for languages spoken by millions in the Horn of Africa. Drawing from hands-on experience, I will then explore the development of machine learning systems for underrepresented languages, focusing on Machine Translation and Automatic Speech Recognition for Amharic and Tigrinya. These case studies offer insight into the technical and social challenges involved, as well as the broader implications for the communities these technologies are intended to serve. I will conclude by discussing how we evaluate machine learning systems. Evaluation is central to defining scientific progress in the field, with benchmarks playing a critical role. Howev...
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Blog: The Predatory Nature of Social Media

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Hey there, reader, I’m sure you must have come across the ridiculous trends that come up on social media. Most of these start off as harmless trends, something that’s fun or that’s aesthetically pleasing, like the restock videos or amazing Amazon finds or the cook from scratch trend. Maybe it’s the human psyche, but over time, these trends take a dark turn. With the cook from scratch trends, it’s now a politically and religiously motivated ‘trad wife’ trend that looks down on feminism, equality and aims to uphold traditional gender roles. Or the restock videos are now evolving into a marketing scheme with increasing over-consumption that’s harmful to our already fragile environment. With social media mirroring our real lives, but with fewer restrictions, my interest in understanding the root cause of why humans do something emboldens as the days go on.  Someone claiming to earn 22,000$ in a couple of days As I was entering into the world of social media trends (believe me, I’m a no...
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