Natural Language Understanding - Walid Saba

Walid S. Saba is the Founder and Principal AI Scientist at ONTOLOGIK.AI where he works on the development of Conversational AI. Prior to this, he was a PrincipalAI Scientist at Astound.ai and Co-Founder and the CTO of Klangoo. He also held various positions at such places as the American Institutes for Research, AT&TBell Labs, Metlife, IBM and Cognos, and has spent 7 years in academia where he taught computer science at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, theUniversity of Windsor, and the American University of Beirut (AUB). Dr. Saba is frequently an invited speaker at various organizations and is also frequently invited to various panels and podcasts that discuss issues related to AI and Natural Language Processing. He has published over 40 technical articles, including an award-winning paper that was presented at theGerman Artificial Intelligence Conference in 2008. Walid holds a BSc and an MSc in Computer Science as well as a Ph.D. in Computer Science (AI/NLP) which he obtained from Carleton University in 1999. 00:00 intro 01:00 Language as a mental construct, PAC,  Subtext in Sentences 06:28 OpenAI’s Codex Platform, Below Human Baseline Performance of NLP 18:00 Comprehension vs Generation,  Search vs Context 19:20 Sophia the Robot, Shallow ethics in AI and Commercialisation of Academia 27:40 Bad Research Papers, Facebook runaway train & AI Godfathers Cult. 32:30 AI leaders and Profiteering, Unethical Behaviour of Influencers. 37:50 Non-Verbal Component of Natural Language Understanding, Prosody and Accuracy Boost 41:33 Ontologik’s NLU Engine, Adjective Ordering Restriction Mystery  43:58 Ontological Structure and Chomsky’s Universal Grammar, Discovery vs Creation 45:31 Entity Extraction and How Ontologik’s Engine tackles this Problem 47:50 Language Agnostic Learning, Foreign Language Learning, and Pedagogy of Linguistics 54:00 First Language, Blank State and Missing Sounds in Some Languages 55:20 Real-time Language Translation Engines, AR/VR Aids and Commercial Utility 01:01:00 Sentiment Analysis, Language Policing & Censorship  01:04:00 Ontological Structures, Gender Bias and Situational Paradox 01:09:00 3 Foods for Rest of the Life & Fad Food Indulgence 01:11:00 Inspiration for Getting into the Field, Career Ideals & Cultural Influence 01:15:30 Epistemology, IQ and The Bell Curve  01:17:00 Einstein’s IQ, Haircut, Social Skills, and Success Rubric 01:22:00 Attracting Brilliant Talent Around the World, Ivy League PhDs & Standardised Testing 01:28:40 Unsupervised Learning, Accuracy & Comprehensibility in NLU 01:30:20 BF Skinner, Pavlovian Dogs, Skinner has been Skinned. 01:37:50 Human Behavioral Biology, Endocrinal System similarities with Humans yet they don’t learn Languages. 01:45:30 Language as an expression of Genetic differences, Big Five & Phenotype. 01:49:40 IBM Watson Personality Insights, Text-based personality Inferences. 01:55:30 Long Short Term Memory Issue in Ontologik’s Engine, Computational Complexity, Timeline for Release