<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div><div class="gmail_default" 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)"> Mon</font><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">day, March 24,<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"> <u style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)">11:30</u></font></b><font color="#000000"><u><b><font face="arial, sans-serif"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"> am</span></font></b><b style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"><font face="arial, sans-serif"> CT </font></b></u></font></font></font></div><div><div class="gmail_default"><div class="gmail_default"><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"><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="font-family:arial,sans-serif;letter-spacing:0.2px"><font color="#3c4043"> </font></span><i style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;letter-spacing:0.2px"><font color="#000000">livestream via </font><b style="color:rgb(0,0,255)"><a href="https://uchicago.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=cc5bda68-8942-4724-87f3-b2a7017990db" target="_blank">panopto</a></b></i></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"><span style="letter-spacing:0.2px"><b style="font-style:italic;font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,255)"> </b><b><font color="#000000" face="garamond, times new roman, serif"><i> Access restricted to TTIC/UChicago*</i></font></b></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>Eunsol Choi, New York University</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 class="gmail_default"><div dir="ltr"><div><p dir="ltr" id="m_-8505693634201348731m_-8109962251780210301m_2767765040961654113m_4331931867628220036m_-4442932724059632450gmail-docs-internal-guid-5f578bda-7fff-41e8-2cfc-0aaba7b02842" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><font size="2"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:700;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline;font-family:arial,sans-serif">Title: </span><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline;font-family:arial,sans-serif">Equipping LLMs for Complex Knowledge Scenarios: Retrieval and Interaction</span></font></p><font size="2"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br></span></font><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><font size="2"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:700;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline;font-family:arial,sans-serif">Abstract: </span><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline;font-family:arial,sans-serif">Natural language provides an intuitive and powerful interface to access knowledge at scale.</span><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:700;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline;font-family:arial,sans-serif"> </span><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline;font-family:arial,sans-serif">However, language models are largely optimized for autoregressive response generation and not as an information access interface. In this talk, I will present two key ingredients for more robust information interfaces: retrieval augmentation and multi-turn interaction. In the first part of the talk, I will discuss retrieval augmentation. While being touted for reducing hallucination, it poses new challenges such as scalability and cascading errors when retrieval fails. To address this, we learn a compressor that maps retrieved documents into textual summaries prior to in-context integration. This process not only reduces the computational cost but also filters irrelevant or incorrect information. In the second part of the talk, I will discuss the challenges of ambiguous and underspecified user inputs. LLMs are almost universally optimized for providing the best single-turn answer to a query, disregarding their potential as dialogue agents. We propose a system that can interact with users to clarify their intent before answering. By simulating their expected outcomes in future turns, we reward LMs for generating clarifying questions and not just answering immediately. Together, the talk outlines key research directions for transforming LMs into an interface to answer information seeking questions. </span></font></p><font size="2"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br></span></font><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><font size="2"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:700;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline;font-family:arial,sans-serif">Bio:</span><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline;font-family:arial,sans-serif"> Eunsol Choi is an assistant professor of Computer Science (Courant Institute) and Data Science at New York University. Her research spans natural language processing and machine learning, with a focus on interpreting and reasoning about text in dynamic real-world contexts. Prior to joining NYU, she was an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin. She also spent a year at Google AI as a visiting researcher. She holds a Ph.D. in computer science and engineering from the University of Washington. She is a recipient of a Facebook research fellowship, Google faculty research award, Sony faculty award, and an outstanding paper award at EMNLP. </span></font></p><font size="2"><br></font></div></div></div></div></div><div><div class="gmail_default"><b style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">Host: </b><a href="mailto:klivescu@ttic.edu" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><b>Karen Livescu</b></a></div></div><div class="gmail_default"><br></div><div class="gmail_default"><font size="1">*<span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">Access to this livestream is limited to TTIC / UChicago (press panopto link and sign in to your UChicago account with </span><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(29,29,33);font-weight:600">CNetID</span><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">). </span></font></div><div class="gmail_default"><br></div><div class="gmail_default"><br></div><div class="gmail_default"><br></div><br clear="all"></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 gmail_quote_container"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Mar 24, 2025 at 10:00 AM 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 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)"> Mon</font><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">day, March 24,<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"> <u style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)">11:30</u></font></b><font color="#000000"><u><b><font face="arial, sans-serif"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"> am</span></font></b><b style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"><font face="arial, sans-serif"> CT </font></b></u></font></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="font-family:arial,sans-serif;letter-spacing:0.2px"><font color="#3c4043"> </font></span><i style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;letter-spacing:0.2px"><font color="#000000">livestream via </font><b style="color:rgb(0,0,255)"><a href="https://uchicago.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=cc5bda68-8942-4724-87f3-b2a7017990db" target="_blank">panopto</a></b></i></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"><span style="letter-spacing:0.2px"><b style="font-style:italic;font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,255)"> </b><b><font color="#000000" face="garamond, times new roman, serif"><i> Access restricted to TTIC/UChicago*</i></font></b></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>Eunsol Choi, New York University</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"><div><p dir="ltr" id="m_-8505693634201348731m_-8109962251780210301m_2767765040961654113m_4331931867628220036m_-4442932724059632450gmail-docs-internal-guid-5f578bda-7fff-41e8-2cfc-0aaba7b02842" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><font size="2"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:700;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline;font-family:arial,sans-serif">Title: </span><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline;font-family:arial,sans-serif">Equipping LLMs for Complex Knowledge Scenarios: Retrieval and Interaction</span></font></p><font size="2"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br></span></font><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><font size="2"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:700;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline;font-family:arial,sans-serif">Abstract: </span><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline;font-family:arial,sans-serif">Natural language provides an intuitive and powerful interface to access knowledge at scale.</span><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:700;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline;font-family:arial,sans-serif"> </span><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline;font-family:arial,sans-serif">However, language models are largely optimized for autoregressive response generation and not as an information access interface. In this talk, I will present two key ingredients for more robust information interfaces: retrieval augmentation and multi-turn interaction. In the first part of the talk, I will discuss retrieval augmentation. While being touted for reducing hallucination, it poses new challenges such as scalability and cascading errors when retrieval fails. To address this, we learn a compressor that maps retrieved documents into textual summaries prior to in-context integration. This process not only reduces the computational cost but also filters irrelevant or incorrect information. In the second part of the talk, I will discuss the challenges of ambiguous and underspecified user inputs. LLMs are almost universally optimized for providing the best single-turn answer to a query, disregarding their potential as dialogue agents. We propose a system that can interact with users to clarify their intent before answering. By simulating their expected outcomes in future turns, we reward LMs for generating clarifying questions and not just answering immediately. Together, the talk outlines key research directions for transforming LMs into an interface to answer information seeking questions. </span></font></p><font size="2"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br></span></font><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><font size="2"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:700;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline;font-family:arial,sans-serif">Bio:</span><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline;font-family:arial,sans-serif"> Eunsol Choi is an assistant professor of Computer Science (Courant Institute) and Data Science at New York University. Her research spans natural language processing and machine learning, with a focus on interpreting and reasoning about text in dynamic real-world contexts. Prior to joining NYU, she was an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin. She also spent a year at Google AI as a visiting researcher. She holds a Ph.D. in computer science and engineering from the University of Washington. She is a recipient of a Facebook research fellowship, Google faculty research award, Sony faculty award, and an outstanding paper award at EMNLP. </span></font></p><font size="2"><br></font></div></div></div></div></div><div><div><b style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">Host: </b><a href="mailto:klivescu@ttic.edu" rel="noreferrer" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif" target="_blank"><b>Karen Livescu</b></a></div></div><div><br></div><div><font size="1">*<span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">Access to this livestream is limited to TTIC / UChicago (press panopto link and sign in to your UChicago account with </span><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(29,29,33);font-weight:600">CNetID</span><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">). </span></font></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><br clear="all"></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, Mar 23, 2025 at 2:58 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 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)"> Mon</font><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">day, March 24,<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"> <u style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)">11:30</u></font></b><font color="#000000"><u><b><font face="arial, sans-serif"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"> am</span></font></b><b style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"><font face="arial, sans-serif"> CT </font></b></u></font></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="font-family:arial,sans-serif;letter-spacing:0.2px"><font color="#3c4043"> </font></span><i style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;letter-spacing:0.2px"><font color="#000000">livestream via </font><b style="color:rgb(0,0,255)"><a href="https://uchicago.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=cc5bda68-8942-4724-87f3-b2a7017990db" target="_blank">panopto</a></b></i></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"><span style="letter-spacing:0.2px"><b style="font-style:italic;font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,255)"> </b><b><font color="#000000" face="garamond, times new roman, serif"><i> Access restricted to TTIC/UChicago*</i></font></b></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>Eunsol Choi, New York University</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"><div><p dir="ltr" id="m_-8505693634201348731m_-8109962251780210301m_2767765040961654113m_4331931867628220036m_-4442932724059632450gmail-docs-internal-guid-5f578bda-7fff-41e8-2cfc-0aaba7b02842" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><font size="2"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:700;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline;font-family:arial,sans-serif">Title: </span><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline;font-family:arial,sans-serif">Equipping LLMs for Complex Knowledge Scenarios: Retrieval and Interaction</span></font></p><font size="2"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br></span></font><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><font size="2"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:700;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline;font-family:arial,sans-serif">Abstract: </span><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline;font-family:arial,sans-serif">Natural language provides an intuitive and powerful interface to access knowledge at scale.</span><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:700;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline;font-family:arial,sans-serif"> </span><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline;font-family:arial,sans-serif">However, language models are largely optimized for autoregressive response generation and not as an information access interface. In this talk, I will present two key ingredients for more robust information interfaces: retrieval augmentation and multi-turn interaction. In the first part of the talk, I will discuss retrieval augmentation. While being touted for reducing hallucination, it poses new challenges such as scalability and cascading errors when retrieval fails. To address this, we learn a compressor that maps retrieved documents into textual summaries prior to in-context integration. This process not only reduces the computational cost but also filters irrelevant or incorrect information. In the second part of the talk, I will discuss the challenges of ambiguous and underspecified user inputs. LLMs are almost universally optimized for providing the best single-turn answer to a query, disregarding their potential as dialogue agents. We propose a system that can interact with users to clarify their intent before answering. By simulating their expected outcomes in future turns, we reward LMs for generating clarifying questions and not just answering immediately. Together, the talk outlines key research directions for transforming LMs into an interface to answer information seeking questions. </span></font></p><font size="2"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br></span></font><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><font size="2"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:700;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline;font-family:arial,sans-serif">Bio:</span><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline;font-family:arial,sans-serif"> Eunsol Choi is an assistant professor of Computer Science (Courant Institute) and Data Science at New York University. Her research spans natural language processing and machine learning, with a focus on interpreting and reasoning about text in dynamic real-world contexts. Prior to joining NYU, she was an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin. She also spent a year at Google AI as a visiting researcher. She holds a Ph.D. in computer science and engineering from the University of Washington. She is a recipient of a Facebook research fellowship, Google faculty research award, Sony faculty award, and an outstanding paper award at EMNLP. </span></font></p><font size="2"><br></font></div></div></div></div></div><div><div><b style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">Host: </b><a href="mailto:klivescu@ttic.edu" rel="noreferrer" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif" target="_blank"><b>Karen Livescu</b></a></div></div><div><br></div><div><font size="1">*<span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">Access to this livestream is limited to TTIC / UChicago (press panopto link and sign in to your UChicago account with </span><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(29,29,33);font-weight:600">CNetID</span><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">). </span></font></div><div><br></div><br clear="all"></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 Tue, Mar 18, 2025 at 10:32 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><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)"> Mon</font><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">day, March 24,<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"> <u style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)">11:30</u></font></b><font color="#000000"><u><b><font face="arial, sans-serif"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"> am</span></font></b><b style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"><font face="arial, sans-serif"> CT </font></b></u></font></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="font-family:arial,sans-serif;letter-spacing:0.2px"><font color="#3c4043"> </font><i><b><font color="#0000ff">tba</font></b></i></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>Eunsol Choi, New York University</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"><div><p dir="ltr" id="m_-8505693634201348731m_-8109962251780210301m_2767765040961654113m_4331931867628220036m_-4442932724059632450gmail-docs-internal-guid-5f578bda-7fff-41e8-2cfc-0aaba7b02842" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><font size="2"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:700;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline;font-family:arial,sans-serif">Title: </span><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline;font-family:arial,sans-serif">Equipping LLMs for Complex Knowledge Scenarios: Retrieval and Interaction</span></font></p><font size="2"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br></span></font><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><font size="2"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:700;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline;font-family:arial,sans-serif">Abstract: </span><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline;font-family:arial,sans-serif">Natural language provides an intuitive and powerful interface to access knowledge at scale.</span><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:700;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline;font-family:arial,sans-serif"> </span><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline;font-family:arial,sans-serif">However, language models are largely optimized for autoregressive response generation and not as an information access interface. In this talk, I will present two key ingredients for more robust information interfaces: retrieval augmentation and multi-turn interaction. In the first part of the talk, I will discuss retrieval augmentation. While being touted for reducing hallucination, it poses new challenges such as scalability and cascading errors when retrieval fails. To address this, we learn a compressor that maps retrieved documents into textual summaries prior to in-context integration. This process not only reduces the computational cost but also filters irrelevant or incorrect information. In the second part of the talk, I will discuss the challenges of ambiguous and underspecified user inputs. LLMs are almost universally optimized for providing the best single-turn answer to a query, disregarding their potential as dialogue agents. We propose a system that can interact with users to clarify their intent before answering. By simulating their expected outcomes in future turns, we reward LMs for generating clarifying questions and not just answering immediately. Together, the talk outlines key research directions for transforming LMs into an interface to answer information seeking questions. </span></font></p><font size="2"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br></span></font><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><font size="2"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:700;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline;font-family:arial,sans-serif">Bio:</span><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline;font-family:arial,sans-serif"> Eunsol Choi is an assistant professor of Computer Science (Courant Institute) and Data Science at New York University. Her research spans natural language processing and machine learning, with a focus on interpreting and reasoning about text in dynamic real-world contexts. Prior to joining NYU, she was an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin. She also spent a year at Google AI as a visiting researcher. She holds a Ph.D. in computer science and engineering from the University of Washington. She is a recipient of a Facebook research fellowship, Google faculty research award, Sony faculty award, and an outstanding paper award at EMNLP. </span></font></p><font size="2"><br></font></div></div></div></div></div><div><div><b style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">Host: </b><a href="mailto:klivescu@ttic.edu" rel="noreferrer" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif" target="_blank"><b>Karen Livescu</b></a></div></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><br clear="all"></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></div>
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