<div dir="ltr"><div>Reminder of Greg Durrett's talk at 10:00am today.</div><div><br></div><div>Best,</div><div>Avrim</div><br><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">---------- Forwarded message ---------<br>From: <strong class="gmail_sendername" dir="auto">Mary Marre</strong> <span dir="auto"><<a href="mailto:mmarre@ttic.edu">mmarre@ttic.edu</a>></span><br>Date: Tue, Feb 4, 2025 at 8:10 PM<br>Subject: [TTIC Talks] 2/11 TTIC Colloquium: Greg Durrett, University of Texas at Austin<br>To: TTIC Talks <<a href="mailto:talks@ttic.edu">talks@ttic.edu</a>>, <<a href="mailto:colloquium@cs.uchicago.edu">colloquium@cs.uchicago.edu</a>>, <<a href="mailto:theory@mailman.cs.uchicago.edu">theory@mailman.cs.uchicago.edu</a>>, Shannon Jordan <<a href="mailto:shannonjordan@uchicago.edu">shannonjordan@uchicago.edu</a>><br></div><br><br><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div><div style="font-size:small"><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="font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"> Tues</font><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">day, February 11,<span class="gmail_default"> </span>2025</span><font style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"> at</font><b><font color="#000000" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"> </font><u><font face="arial, sans-serif" color="#000000" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)">10:00</font></u></b><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"><font color="#000000"><b><u><font face="arial, sans-serif"> am</font></u></b><b><font face="arial, sans-serif"><u> CT</u> </font><font style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"> </font><font style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"> </font></b></font></span></font></font></div><div><div><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"><b><font color="#500050" face="arial, sans-serif"><br></font></b></p><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"><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="font-weight:bold"> </font>at<br></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"><font color="#500050"> </font><font color="#000000"> TTIC, 6045 S. Kenwood Avenue</font></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" 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="font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(60,64,67);letter-spacing:0.2px">Virtually:</b><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(60,64,67);letter-spacing:0.2px"> </span><span style="letter-spacing:0.2px"><font color="#0000ff" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><b> </b></font></span><span style="color:rgb(60,64,67);font-family:arial,sans-serif;letter-spacing:0.2px"> </span><i style="color:rgb(60,64,67);font-family:arial,sans-serif;letter-spacing:0.2px">via panopto: </i><a href="https://uchicago.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=0023003d-f434-41e5-9ef7-b27b001672c4" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;letter-spacing:0.2px" target="_blank"><b>livestream</b></a><span style="color:rgb(60,64,67);font-family:arial,sans-serif;letter-spacing:0.2px"> </span></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"><b style="color:rgb(34,34,34);letter-spacing:0.2px"><font size="1" face="tahoma, sans-serif"> </font></b></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"><span style="color:rgb(60,64,67);letter-spacing:0.2px"><b><font face="arial, sans-serif"> </font></b></span></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="color:rgb(80,0,80);vertical-align:inherit"><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><b>Who: </b> <font color="#500050"> </font><font color="#000000"><font color="#500050"> </font></font></font></font></font>Greg Durrett, University of Texas at Austin</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"><br></p><div style="border-top:none;border-right:none;border-left:none;border-bottom:2.25pt solid rgb(11,118,159);padding:0in 0in 1pt"></div><div><br></div></div></div><div><div dir="ltr"><b>Title: </b>Specializing LLMs for Reliability<br><br><b>Abstract: </b>Large language models (LLMs) have advanced the frontiers of AI reasoning: they can synthesize information from multiple sources, derive new conclusions, and explain those conclusions to their users. However, LLMs do not do this reliably. They hallucinate facts, convincingly state incorrect deductions, and exhibit logical fallacies like confirmation bias. In this talk, I will describe my lab's work on making LLM systems reliable by introspecting their behavior. First, I will demonstrate that better understanding of LLMs helps us train them to be more reliable reasoners. Our work shows that model interpretation techniques can advance training methodology and dataset curation for reasoning models. Second, I will argue that automating fine-grained evaluation of LLM output provides a level of understanding necessary for further progress. I will describe the ingredients of effective automated evaluators and a state-of-the-art factuality evaluation system, MiniCheck, showing that analyzing the nature of hallucinations can help reduce them. Finally, I will describe how deeper understanding of LLMs will let us tackle their most fundamental limitations, such as their inconsistency when given different inputs. I will propose how these pieces might soon be combined to form reliable AI systems.<div><br><b>Bio: </b>Greg Durrett is an associate professor of Computer Science at UT Austin. His research is broadly in the areas of natural language processing and machine learning. His group develops techniques for reasoning about knowledge in text, verifying factuality of LLM generations, and specializing LLMs to make them more reliable. He is a 2023 Sloan Research Fellow and a recipient of a 2022 NSF CAREER award. His work has been recognized by paper awards at EMNLP 2024 and EMNLP 2013. He was a founding organizer of the Workshop on Natural Language Reasoning and Structured Explanations at ACL 2023 and ACL 2024 and is a current member of the NAACL board. He received his BS in Computer Science and Mathematics from MIT and his PhD in Computer Science from UC Berkeley, where he was advised by Dan Klein.</div><div><br></div></div></div></div></div><div><div><b style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">Host: </b><a href="mailto:mcallester@ttic.edu" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif" target="_blank"><b>David McAllester</b></a></div></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><br clear="all"></div><div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="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></div>
</div>
</div></div>