Advanced Topics in Natural Language Processing

Lectures and Schedules

Date Lecture Reading Assignment
08/23 [CIF] Overview, Introduction, NLP History and Current Status Reading on Language Representations and Foundation Models
08/25 [CIF] Language Representations
08/30 [CIF] Neural Architectures for Foundation Models Reading on Prompt Learning
09/01 [CIF] Prompt Learning Reading on Tool Learning
09/06 [CIF] Tool Learning (taught by Yi R. Fung) Reading on LLM Position Papers
09/08 [Zoom] What Cannot be Done by LLMs? Project Topics Overview & Breakout Room Discussions
09/13 [CIF] Mid-Term Exam I [Proctored by TAs] Reading on In-Context Learning
09/15 [CIF] In-Context Learning and Programming Language Models Reading on Chain-of-Thought
09/20 [CIF] Chain-of-Thought, Instruction Fine-tuning, LLM Self-Critic and Self-Update Reading on Abstractive Summarization
09/22 [CIF] Abstractive Summarization (taught by Vicki Qi Zeng) Reading on LLM Hallucination Control
09/27 [CIF] LLM Hallucination Control Reading on Information Extraction
09/29 [CIF] Frontiers of Information Extraction Reading on Schema Induction
10/04 [CIF] Schema Induction Reading on Knowledge-Augmented LLMs
10/06 [CIF] Knowledge-Augmented LLMs Reading on Creative Generation
10/11 [Guest Lecture by Prof. Bonnie Dorr in SC2405] NLP Applications: Challenges, Risks, and Opportunities in the age of Chat GPT
10/13 [CIF] LLM based Creative Generation Reading on Language and Vision Initial Project Proposal Due Oct 13, 1 page, see Project Proposal Requirement
10/18 [CIF] Language and Vision Reading on Deep Learning from Graphs for NLP
10/20 [CIF] Deep Learning from Graphs for NLP Reading on Language Model Safety
10/25 [CIF] Language Model Debiasing and Detoxification Reading on Question Answering
10/27 [CIF] Mid-Term Exam II (Proctored by TAs)
11/01 [8:30pm-9:45pm over Zoom] Project proposal lighting talks Mid-Term Project Report Due Nov 12, 4 pages
11/03 [CIF] Question Answering (taught by Revanth Reddy)
11/08 [CIF] Question Answering (taught by Revanth Reddy) Reading on Misinformation Detection
11/10 [CIF] Misinformation Detection and Adversarial Training Data Generation (taught by Yi R. Fung) Reading on AI for Science
11/15 [Guest Lecture by Prof. Shuiwang Ji in SC2405] AI for Science
11/17 [CIF] No Class, merge class into 12/01
11/29 No Class, merge class into 12/01
12/01 3:30pm-7:30pm CT [Zoom] Projects Presentation over zoom
12/06 No class, Group discussion and project report writing Final Project Report due on 12/15, up to 8 pages in ACL format

Course Description

In this course we will teach advanced topics in natural language processing, ranging from general techniques such as foundation models for NLP to specific topics such as information extraction, question answering, misinformation detection, summarization, creative generation, and NLP for Science. Review of classic as well as state-of-the-art techniques and remaining challenges, and exploration of recent proposals for meeting these challenges. Intended for graduate students doing research in natural language processing.

 

Grading

Course Materials

The instructor will write most of the slides and hand-outs, give survey about the best papers from

The following books may provide some useful background:

Prerequisites

Class Policy

Mailing List