Date and time: 27.03.25, 5pm CET
Speaker: Flor Miriam Plaza del Arco, Universidad de Bocconi
Abstract:
In this talk, we will address the concept of emotions and their relationship to Natural Language Processing (NLP). We will discuss current trends and gaps in emotion analysis in this field, as well as real-world applications such as social media monitoring, empathetic dialogue systems, and chatbots for mental health. We will also discuss ethical implications, focusing on biases and stereotypes of large language models, as well as the consequences of implementing “empathetic” and emotionally supportive chatbots. The talk will provide an overview of the benefits and challenges of integrating emotions into language technologies.
Bio:
Flor Miriam Plaza del Arco is a PhD Assistant Professor at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) at Leiden University, the Netherlands. Previously, she was a postdoctoral researcher in the MilaNLP group at Università Bocconi, Italy. In January 2023, she obtained her PhD in Information and Communication Technologies from the SINAI group at the University of Jaén, where she significantly contributed to hate speech detection by creating resources and language models. Her research centers on the intersection of language, technology, and society, focusing on emotion analysis and offensive language, aiming to generate a positive impact on society. Recently, she is investigating the ethical implications of emotion analysis in large language models through the identification of biases and stereotypes. Flor has co-organized several shared tasks such as EmoEvalES, MeOffendES and MentalRiskES at Iberlef (SEPLN), and workshops such as “The 8th Workshop on Online Abuse and Harms (WOAH)” at the NAACL conference in 2024. She has also co-organized the tutorial “Countering Hateful and Offensive Speech Online - Open Challenges” at the EMNLP conference 2024. Recently, she has been awarded the prestigious National Computer Science Award in the Young Researchers category, granted by SCIE and the BBVA Foundation, as well as the award for the best doctoral thesis in NLP, granted by SEPLN.
Link to the talk: https://youtu.be/YhfTp5KbLDM?si=UCAnY-p8_SrGZXKn
Registration (mandatory) and link
Zoom link (mandatory registration): https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_OLyTe9ZFRs-TrbX6wizE2g
