Ling/CSE 472: Assignment 3: Critical Reading of Popular Press Articles on Language Technology

Overview

This assignment asks you to do a critical reading of a popular press article on some particular piece of language technology.

Instructions

• Find an article, published 2015 or later, in the popular press describing some language technology. Good sources are the technology sections of major newspapers, magazines like WIRED, or tech-focused websites like cnet.com.
• Submit, as a single pdf, your answer to all of the following questions. We expect your assignment to be ~3-4 pages, double spaced, total.

  Note: You can either format your write up as a single coherent document addressing all these questions, or you may choose to format it as separate section per question, in which case the paragraph(s) which go into each section should still be well-written and fully coherent. Assume that people reading your write up do not have any other materials in front of them. We expect you to integrate #8 into the overall document by introducing it with a sentence or two saying why such a post would be important.

  1. What is the title, author, date, and publication venue (i.e. what newspaper, magazine, website) and URL of the article?
     
     
  2. Briefly summarize the article: What is the technology described? What is the article's main thesis about the technology/what key ideas does the author want the reader to come away with?
     
     
  3. What is the primary source the article is relying on in its description of the technology? (Is it an academic paper, a press release, a blog post, an interview with a relevant expert?)
     
     
     • Can you get access to that primary source? If so, read it and also provide the URL.
     • How do the claims in the popular press article relate to what's claimed in the primary source? (Are they the same, less hedged, a subset, other?)
     • If you can consult the primary source, does it involve experimental work (i.e. a careful evaluation according to standard NLP methodology?)
     • Regardless of whether you can consult the primary source, can you tell from the popular press article what kind of evaluation was carried out? If so, briefly describe the evaluation (test data, metrics, baseline) to the extent that you can. If not, what kind of evaluation would be appropriate for this technology?
     
     
  4. How does the headline relate to the body of the popular press article? If someone read only the headline, how would the beliefs they formed about the technology being discussed relate to what they would believe if they read the full article?
     
     
  5. Based on your comparison to the primary source and/or your sense of the state of the art in the field, what are some limitations of the technology that are not apparent in the popular press article?
     
     
  6. Thinking of yourself as a reader, in what ways does the article accurately portray the technology described? In what ways is it misleading?
     
     
  7. Thinking of someone without any training in linguistics, CS or computational linguistics as a reader, for them, in what ways does the article accurately portray the technology described? In what ways is it misleading?
     
     
  8. Imagine you were posting the article you picked on social media or otherwise sharing it with friends who don't have your training in linguistics/CS/compling. Write the post you would use to contextualize it for them. (The shape of this post will vary depending on whether the purpose of the post is to share the info in the article, but with the additional missing context, i.e. you think the article is fundamentally interesting or worthwhile, or if the purpose of the post is to warn your friends about misleading articles. Either one is okay, but it should be clear from how you wrote it which it is.)