<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><div class="gmail_default"><font style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:inherit"><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><b>When:</b> </font></font><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><font style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"> Monday</font><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">, <span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"><b>January 23rd</b></span></span><font style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"> at</font><b style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"> <u><font face="verdana, sans-serif">11:30</font></u></b><b><u><font face="verdana, sans-serif" color="#000000"> a</font></u></b><font face="verdana, sans-serif"><b><u><font color="#000000">m CT</font></u><font color="#000000"> </font></b></font></font></font><br></div><div class="gmail_default"><p style="color:rgb(80,0,80);font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;line-height:normal;margin:0px"><font face="arial, sans-serif" color="#000000"><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><b><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"><br></span></b></font></font></font></p><div class="gmail_default"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b><font color="#500050">Where: </font></b><font color="#000000">Talk will be given </font><font color="#000000" style="font-weight:bold"><u>live, in-person</u></font><font style="color:rgb(80,0,80);font-weight:bold"> </font><font style="color:rgb(80,0,80)">at</font></font></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><font color="#500050"> </font><font color="#000000"> TTIC, 6045 S. Kenwood Avenue</font></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="arial, sans-serif" color="#000000"> 5th Floor, Room 530<b> </b></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;color:rgb(80,0,80);line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b><span style="color:black"><br></span></b></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><b style="color:rgb(60,64,67);font-family:Roboto,Arial,sans-serif;letter-spacing:0.2px;white-space:pre-wrap">Virtually:</b><span style="font-size:14px;color:rgb(60,64,67);font-family:Roboto,Arial,sans-serif;letter-spacing:0.2px;white-space:pre-wrap"> <i>via</i> Panopto </span>(<b><a href="https://uchicago.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=69dd2edf-2845-4f0d-bb18-af8d0015033c" target="_blank">livestream</a></b><span style="font-size:14px;color:rgb(60,64,67);font-family:Roboto,Arial,sans-serif;letter-spacing:0.2px;white-space:pre-wrap">)</span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;color:rgb(80,0,80);line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><br></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><font style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"><b>Who: </b> </font><font color="#500050" style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"> </font><font color="#000000"><font color="#500050"> </font></font></font></font></font>Victor Zhong, University of Washington</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;color:rgb(80,0,80);line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><br></p><div class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:11pt;text-align:center;line-height:15.6933px;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><hr size="2" width="100%" align="center"></div><div><p style="color:rgb(60,64,67);letter-spacing:0.2px;white-space:pre-wrap"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal"><b>Title: </b></span><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal">Reading to Learn: Improving Generalization by Learning From Language</span><br style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal"><br style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal"><b>Abstract: </b></span><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal">Traditional machine learning (ML) systems are trained on vast quantities of annotated data or experience. These systems often do not generalize to new, related problems that emerge after training, such as conversing about new topics or interacting with new environments. In this talk, I present Reading to Learn, a new class of algorithms that improve generalization by learning to read language specifications, without requiring any actual experience or labeled examples. This includes, for example, reading FAQ documents to learn to answer new questions and reading manuals to learn to play new games. I will discuss new algorithms and data for Reading to Learn applied to a broad range of tasks, including pretraining for grounded reinforcement learning, data synthesis for code generation, and task-oriented dialogue about new topics, while also highlighting open challenges for this line of work. Ultimately, the goal of Reading to Learn is to democratize AI by making it accessible for low-resource problems where the practitioner cannot obtain annotated data at scale, but can instead write language specifications that models read to generalize.</span><br style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal"><br style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal"><b>Bio:</b> </span><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal">Victor</span><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal"> Zhong is a PhD student at the University of Washington Natural Language Processing group. His research is at the intersection of natural language processing and machine learning, with an emphasis on how to use language understanding to learn more generally and more efficiently. His research covers a range of topics, including dialogue, code generation, question answering, and grounded reinforcement learning. </span><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal">Victor</span><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal"> has been awarded the Apple AI/ML Fellowship as well as an EMNLP Outstanding Paper award. His work has been featured in Wired, MIT Technology Review, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Fast Company, and Quanta Magazine. He was a founding member of Salesforce Research, and has previously worked at Meta AI Research and Google Brain. He obtained a Masters in Computer Science from Stanford University and a Bachelor of Applied Science in Computer Engineering from the University of Toronto.</span><br style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal">
</p></div></div><div class="gmail_default"><b>Host:</b> <a href="mailto:klivescu@ttic.edu" target="_blank">Karen Livescu</a></div><div class="gmail_default"><br></div><div class="gmail_default"><br></div></div><div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:x-small">Mary C. Marre</span><br></div><div><div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="1">Faculty Administrative Support</font></div><div><i><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color="#3d85c6" size="1"><b>Toyota Technological Institute</b></font></i></div><div><i><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color="#3d85c6" size="1">6045 S. Kenwood Avenue, Rm 517</font></i></div><div><font size="1"><i><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color="#3d85c6">Chicago, IL 60637</font></i><br></font></div><div><font size="1"><i><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color="#3d85c6">773-834-1757</font></i></font></div><div><b><i><a href="mailto:mmarre@ttic.edu" target="_blank"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="1">mmarre@ttic.edu</font></a></i></b></div></div></div></div></div><br></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sun, Jan 22, 2023 at 3:33 PM Mary Marre <<a href="mailto:mmarre@ttic.edu">mmarre@ttic.edu</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div><div><font style="font-size:small;font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:inherit"><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><b>When:</b> </font></font><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><font style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"> <font>Monday</font></font><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><font>, <span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"><b>January 23rd</b></span></font></span><font style="font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"> at</font><b style="font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"> <u><font face="verdana, sans-serif">11:30</font></u></b><b style="font-size:small"><u><font face="verdana, sans-serif" color="#000000"> a</font></u></b><font face="verdana, sans-serif" style="font-size:small"><b><u><font color="#000000">m CT</font></u><font color="#000000"> </font></b></font></font></font><br></div><div style="font-size:small"><p style="color:rgb(80,0,80);font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;line-height:normal;margin:0px"><font face="arial, sans-serif" color="#000000"><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><b><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"><br></span></b></font></font></font></p><div><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b><font color="#500050">Where: </font></b><font color="#000000">Talk will be given </font><font color="#000000" style="font-weight:bold"><u>live, in-person</u></font><font style="color:rgb(80,0,80);font-weight:bold"> </font><font style="color:rgb(80,0,80)">at</font></font></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><font color="#500050"> </font><font color="#000000"> TTIC, 6045 S. Kenwood Avenue</font></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="arial, sans-serif" color="#000000"> 5th Floor, Room 530<b> </b></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;color:rgb(80,0,80);line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b><span style="color:black"><br></span></b></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><b style="color:rgb(60,64,67);font-family:Roboto,Arial,sans-serif;letter-spacing:0.2px;white-space:pre-wrap">Virtually:</b><span style="font-size:14px;color:rgb(60,64,67);font-family:Roboto,Arial,sans-serif;letter-spacing:0.2px;white-space:pre-wrap"> <i>via</i> Panopto </span>(<b><a href="https://uchicago.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=69dd2edf-2845-4f0d-bb18-af8d0015033c" target="_blank">livestream</a></b><span style="font-size:14px;color:rgb(60,64,67);font-family:Roboto,Arial,sans-serif;letter-spacing:0.2px;white-space:pre-wrap">)</span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;color:rgb(80,0,80);line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><br></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><font style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"><b>Who: </b> </font><font color="#500050" style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"> </font><font color="#000000"><font color="#500050"> </font></font></font></font></font><span>Victor</span> Zhong, University of Washington</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;color:rgb(80,0,80);line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><br></p><div class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:11pt;text-align:center;line-height:15.6933px;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><hr size="2" width="100%" align="center"></div><div><p style="color:rgb(60,64,67);letter-spacing:0.2px;white-space:pre-wrap"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal"><b>Title: </b></span><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal">Reading to Learn: Improving Generalization by Learning From Language</span><br style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal"><br style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal"><b>Abstract: </b></span><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal">Traditional machine learning (ML) systems are trained on vast quantities of annotated data or experience. These systems often do not generalize to new, related problems that emerge after training, such as conversing about new topics or interacting with new environments. In this talk, I present Reading to Learn, a new class of algorithms that improve generalization by learning to read language specifications, without requiring any actual experience or labeled examples. This includes, for example, reading FAQ documents to learn to answer new questions and reading manuals to learn to play new games. I will discuss new algorithms and data for Reading to Learn applied to a broad range of tasks, including pretraining for grounded reinforcement learning, data synthesis for code generation, and task-oriented dialogue about new topics, while also highlighting open challenges for this line of work. Ultimately, the goal of Reading to Learn is to democratize AI by making it accessible for low-resource problems where the practitioner cannot obtain annotated data at scale, but can instead write language specifications that models read to generalize.</span><br style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal"><br style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal"><b>Bio:</b> </span><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal"><span>Victor</span></span><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal"> Zhong is a PhD student at the University of Washington Natural Language Processing group. His research is at the intersection of natural language processing and machine learning, with an emphasis on how to use language understanding to learn more generally and more efficiently. His research covers a range of topics, including dialogue, code generation, question answering, and grounded reinforcement learning. </span><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal"><span>Victor</span></span><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal"> has been awarded the Apple AI/ML Fellowship as well as an EMNLP Outstanding Paper award. His work has been featured in Wired, MIT Technology Review, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Fast Company, and Quanta Magazine. He was a founding member of Salesforce Research, and has previously worked at Meta AI Research and Google Brain. He obtained a Masters in Computer Science from Stanford University and a Bachelor of Applied Science in Computer Engineering from the University of Toronto.</span><br style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal">
</p></div></div><div style="font-size:small"><b>Host:</b> <a href="mailto:klivescu@ttic.edu" target="_blank">Karen Livescu</a></div><div style="font-size:small"><br></div><div style="font-size:small"><br></div><div style="font-size:small"><br></div></div><div><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:x-small">Mary C. Marre</span><br></div><div><div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="1">Faculty Administrative Support</font></div><div><i><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color="#3d85c6" size="1"><b>Toyota Technological Institute</b></font></i></div><div><i><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color="#3d85c6" size="1">6045 S. Kenwood Avenue, Rm 517</font></i></div><div><font size="1"><i><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color="#3d85c6">Chicago, IL 60637</font></i><br></font></div><div><font size="1"><i><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color="#3d85c6">773-834-1757</font></i></font></div><div><b><i><a href="mailto:mmarre@ttic.edu" target="_blank"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="1">mmarre@ttic.edu</font></a></i></b></div></div></div></div></div><br></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, Jan 17, 2023 at 8:00 AM Mary Marre <<a href="mailto:mmarre@ttic.edu" target="_blank">mmarre@ttic.edu</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div><div><font style="font-size:small;font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:inherit"><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><b>When:</b> </font></font><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><font style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"> <font size="4" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Monday</font></font><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><font size="4"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">, </span><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)">January 23rd</span></font></span><font style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255);font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"> at</font><b style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255);font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"> <u><font face="verdana, sans-serif">11:30</font></u></b><b style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255);font-size:small"><u><font face="verdana, sans-serif" color="#000000"> a</font></u></b><font face="verdana, sans-serif" style="font-size:small"><b><u><font color="#000000" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">m CT</font></u><font color="#000000"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"> </span></font></b></font></font></font><br></div><div style="font-size:small"><p style="color:rgb(80,0,80);font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;line-height:normal;margin:0px"><font face="arial, sans-serif" color="#000000"><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><b><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"><br></span></b></font></font></font></p><div><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b><font color="#500050">Where: </font></b><font color="#000000">Talk will be given </font><font style="font-weight:bold" color="#000000"><u>live, in-person</u></font><font style="color:rgb(80,0,80);font-weight:bold"> </font><font style="color:rgb(80,0,80)">at</font></font></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><font color="#500050"> </font><font color="#000000"> TTIC, 6045 S. Kenwood Avenue</font></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="arial, sans-serif" color="#000000"> 5th Floor, Room 530<b> </b></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;color:rgb(80,0,80);line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b><span style="color:black"><br></span></b></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><b style="color:rgb(60,64,67);font-family:Roboto,Arial,sans-serif;letter-spacing:0.2px;white-space:pre-wrap">Virtually:</b><span style="font-size:14px;color:rgb(60,64,67);font-family:Roboto,Arial,sans-serif;letter-spacing:0.2px;white-space:pre-wrap"> <i>via</i> Panopto </span>(<b><a href="https://uchicago.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=69dd2edf-2845-4f0d-bb18-af8d0015033c" target="_blank">livestream</a></b><span style="font-size:14px;color:rgb(60,64,67);font-family:Roboto,Arial,sans-serif;letter-spacing:0.2px;white-space:pre-wrap">)</span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;color:rgb(80,0,80);line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><br></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><font style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"><b>Who: </b> </font><font color="#500050" style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"> </font><font color="#000000"><font color="#500050"> </font></font></font></font></font>Victor Zhong, University of Washington</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;color:rgb(80,0,80);line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><br></p><div class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:11pt;text-align:center;line-height:15.6933px;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><hr size="2" width="100%" align="center"></div><div><p style="color:rgb(60,64,67);letter-spacing:0.2px;white-space:pre-wrap"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal"><b>Title: </b></span><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal">Reading to Learn: Improving Generalization by Learning From Language</span><br style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal"><br style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal"><b>Abstract: </b></span><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal">Traditional machine learning (ML) systems are trained on vast quantities of annotated data or experience. These systems often do not generalize to new, related problems that emerge after training, such as conversing about new topics or interacting with new environments. In this talk, I present Reading to Learn, a new class of algorithms that improve generalization by learning to read language specifications, without requiring any actual experience or labeled examples. This includes, for example, reading FAQ documents to learn to answer new questions and reading manuals to learn to play new games. I will discuss new algorithms and data for Reading to Learn applied to a broad range of tasks, including pretraining for grounded reinforcement learning, data synthesis for code generation, and task-oriented dialogue about new topics, while also highlighting open challenges for this line of work. Ultimately, the goal of Reading to Learn is to democratize AI by making it accessible for low-resource problems where the practitioner cannot obtain annotated data at scale, but can instead write language specifications that models read to generalize.</span><br style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal"><br style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal"><b>Bio:</b> </span><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal">Victor</span><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal"> Zhong is a PhD student at the University of Washington Natural Language Processing group. His research is at the intersection of natural language processing and machine learning, with an emphasis on how to use language understanding to learn more generally and more efficiently. His research covers a range of topics, including dialogue, code generation, question answering, and grounded reinforcement learning. </span><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal">Victor</span><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal"> has been awarded the Apple AI/ML Fellowship as well as an EMNLP Outstanding Paper award. His work has been featured in Wired, MIT Technology Review, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Fast Company, and Quanta Magazine. He was a founding member of Salesforce Research, and has previously worked at Meta AI Research and Google Brain. He obtained a Masters in Computer Science from Stanford University and a Bachelor of Applied Science in Computer Engineering from the University of Toronto.</span><br style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal">
</p></div></div><div style="font-size:small"><b>Host:</b> <a href="mailto:klivescu@ttic.edu" target="_blank">Karen Livescu</a></div><div style="font-size:small"><br></div><div style="font-size:small"><br></div></div><div><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:x-small">Mary C. Marre</span><br></div><div><div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="1">Faculty Administrative Support</font></div><div><i><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color="#3d85c6" size="1"><b>Toyota Technological Institute</b></font></i></div><div><i><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color="#3d85c6" size="1">6045 S. Kenwood Avenue, Rm 517</font></i></div><div><font size="1"><i><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color="#3d85c6">Chicago, IL 60637</font></i><br></font></div><div><font size="1"><i><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color="#3d85c6">773-834-1757</font></i></font></div><div><b><i><a href="mailto:mmarre@ttic.edu" target="_blank"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="1">mmarre@ttic.edu</font></a></i></b></div></div></div></div></div><br></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Jan 16, 2023 at 7:37 PM Mary Marre <<a href="mailto:mmarre@ttic.edu" target="_blank">mmarre@ttic.edu</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div style="font-size:small"><div><font style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:inherit"><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><b>When:</b> </font></font><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><font style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"> Monday</font><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">, January 30th</span><font style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"> at</font><b style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"> <span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"><u><font face="verdana, sans-serif">11:30</font></u></span></b><b><u><font face="verdana, sans-serif" color="#000000" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"> a</font></u></b><font face="verdana, sans-serif"><b><u><font color="#000000" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)">m CT</font></u><font color="#000000"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"> </span></font></b></font></font></font><br></div><div><p style="color:rgb(80,0,80);font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;line-height:normal;margin:0px"><font face="arial, sans-serif" color="#000000"><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><b><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"><br></span></b></font></font></font></p><div><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b><font color="#500050">Where: </font></b><font color="#000000">Talk will be given </font><font color="#0000ff" style="font-weight:bold"><u>live, in-person</u></font><font style="color:rgb(80,0,80);font-weight:bold"> </font><font style="color:rgb(80,0,80)">at</font></font></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><font color="#500050"> </font><font color="#000000"> TTIC, 6045 S. Kenwood Avenue</font></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="arial, sans-serif" color="#000000"> 5th Floor, Room 530<b> </b></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;color:rgb(80,0,80);line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b><span style="color:black"><br></span></b></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><b style="color:rgb(60,64,67);font-family:Roboto,Arial,sans-serif;letter-spacing:0.2px;white-space:pre-wrap">Virtually:</b><span style="font-size:14px;color:rgb(60,64,67);font-family:Roboto,Arial,sans-serif;letter-spacing:0.2px;white-space:pre-wrap"> <i>via</i> Panopto </span>(<b><a href="https://uchicago.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=69dd2edf-2845-4f0d-bb18-af8d0015033c" target="_blank">livestream</a></b><span style="font-size:14px;color:rgb(60,64,67);font-family:Roboto,Arial,sans-serif;letter-spacing:0.2px;white-space:pre-wrap">)</span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;color:rgb(80,0,80);line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><br></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><font style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"><b>Who: </b> </font><font color="#500050" style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"> </font><font color="#000000"><font color="#500050"> </font></font></font></font></font>Victor Zhong, University of Washington</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;color:rgb(80,0,80);line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><br></p><div class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:11pt;text-align:center;line-height:15.6933px;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><hr size="2" width="100%" align="center"></div><div><p style="color:rgb(60,64,67);letter-spacing:0.2px;white-space:pre-wrap"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal"><b>Title: </b></span><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal">Reading to Learn: Improving Generalization by Learning From Language</span><br style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal"><br style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal"><b>Abstract: </b></span><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal">Traditional machine learning (ML) systems are trained on vast quantities of annotated data or experience. These systems often do not generalize to new, related problems that emerge after training, such as conversing about new topics or interacting with new environments. In this talk, I present Reading to Learn, a new class of algorithms that improve generalization by learning to read language specifications, without requiring any actual experience or labeled examples. This includes, for example, reading FAQ documents to learn to answer new questions and reading manuals to learn to play new games. I will discuss new algorithms and data for Reading to Learn applied to a broad range of tasks, including pretraining for grounded reinforcement learning, data synthesis for code generation, and task-oriented dialogue about new topics, while also highlighting open challenges for this line of work. Ultimately, the goal of Reading to Learn is to democratize AI by making it accessible for low-resource problems where the practitioner cannot obtain annotated data at scale, but can instead write language specifications that models read to generalize.</span><br style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal"><br style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal"><b>Bio:</b> </span><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal">Victor</span><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal"> Zhong is a PhD student at the University of Washington Natural Language Processing group. His research is at the intersection of natural language processing and machine learning, with an emphasis on how to use language understanding to learn more generally and more efficiently. His research covers a range of topics, including dialogue, code generation, question answering, and grounded reinforcement learning. </span><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal">Victor</span><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal"> has been awarded the Apple AI/ML Fellowship as well as an EMNLP Outstanding Paper award. His work has been featured in Wired, MIT Technology Review, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Fast Company, and Quanta Magazine. He was a founding member of Salesforce Research, and has previously worked at Meta AI Research and Google Brain. He obtained a Masters in Computer Science from Stanford University and a Bachelor of Applied Science in Computer Engineering from the University of Toronto.</span><br style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:normal;white-space:normal">
</p></div></div><div><b>Host:</b> <a href="mailto:klivescu@ttic.edu" target="_blank">Karen Livescu</a></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div><div><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:x-small">Mary C. Marre</span><br></div><div><div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="1">Faculty Administrative Support</font></div><div><i><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color="#3d85c6" size="1"><b>Toyota Technological Institute</b></font></i></div><div><i><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color="#3d85c6" size="1">6045 S. Kenwood Avenue, Rm 517</font></i></div><div><font size="1"><i><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color="#3d85c6">Chicago, IL 60637</font></i><br></font></div><div><font size="1"><i><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color="#3d85c6">773-834-1757</font></i></font></div><div><b><i><a href="mailto:mmarre@ttic.edu" target="_blank"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="1">mmarre@ttic.edu</font></a></i></b></div></div></div></div></div></div>
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