Sentence End and Punctuation Prediction in NLG Text at SwissText2021
A group of researchers from INESC-ID, in partnership with Unbabel, are one of the winning teams of the Shared Task “Sentence End and Punctuation Prediction” at SwissText2021.
“This was a very competitive and in the end we are really pleased to be one of the winning teams! For our team this was the icing on the cake, after 1 year of collaboration on the topic of Automatic Rich Transcription (ART)”, mentioned Ricardo Rei, one of the INESC-ID researchers involved.
7 teams participated, with the “Unbabel-INESC-ID” team taking first place, along with 2 other teams.
The goal of the shared task was to build models for identifying the end of a sentence by detecting an appropriate position for putting an appropriate punctuation mark. Specifically, we offer the following subtasks:
Subtask 1 (fully unpunctuated sentences-full stop detection): Given the textual content of an utterance where the full stops are fully removed, correctly detect the end of sentences by placing a full stop in appropriate positions.
Subtask 2 (fully unpunctuated sentences- full punctuation marks): Given the textual content of an utterance where all punctuation marks are fully removed, correctly predict all punctuation marks.
Due to the extremely close results of the first three solutions, the evaluators decided to announce the first three high-performing systems as the joint shared task winners.
“We tried to look at the results from different angles, but couldn’t find any decisive criteria to select a single winner based on the scores. Congratulations to the HTW+t2k, Onpoint, and Unbabel-INESC-ID teams for their fine works” mentioned the organizers Don Tuggener and Ahmad Aghaebrahimian.
The Unbabel-INESC-ID team is made up of researchers Ricardo Rei, Nuno Guerreiro, Luisa Coheur and Fernando Batista.
Upcoming Events
NII International Internship Programme Presentation and Q&A by Emmanuel Planas
On April 30, Emmanuel Planas, the acting director of the Global Liaison Office (GLO) and responsible for the internationalisation program at the National Institute of Informatics (NII) in Tokyo, Japan, will give a presentation to introduce the NII and its internship program to INESC-ID students and IST’s Master’s in Computer Science students.
Date & Time: April 30, 14h00
Where: Sala Polivalente, Técnico – Taguspark
“The NII International Internship Program is an exchange activity with students from institutions with which NII has concluded a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) agreement. This incentive program aims at giving interns the opportunity for professional and personal development by engaging in research activities under the guidance and supervision of NII researchers.
The NII Internship Program is open to Research Master’s and PhD students who are currently enrolled at one of the partner institutions that have signed an MOU agreement with NII.”
Educational Workshop on Responsible AI for Peace and Security (UNODA)
On June 6 and 7, The United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) are offering a selected group of technical students the opportunity to join a 2-day educational workshop on Responsible AI for peace and security.
The third workshop in the series will be held in Porto Salvo, Portugal, in collaboration with GAIPS, INESC-ID, and Instituto Superior Técnico. The workshop is open to students affiliated with universities in Europe, Central and South America, the Middle East and Africa, Oceania, and Asia.
Date & Time: June 6 a 7
Where: IST – Tagus Park, Porto Salvo
Registration deadline: April 8
Summary: “As with the impacts of Artificial intelligence (AI) on people’s day-to-day lives, the impacts for international peace and security include wide-ranging and significant opportunities and challenges. AI can help achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals, but its dual-use nature means that peaceful applications can also be misused for harmful purposes such as political disinformation, cyberattacks, terrorism, or military operations. Meanwhile, those researching and developing AI in the civilian sector remain too often unaware of the risks that the misuse of civilian AI technology may pose to international peace and security and unsure about the role they can play in addressing them. Against this background, UNODA and SIPRI launched, in 2023, a three-year educational initiative on Promoting Responsible Innovation in AI for Peace and Security. The initiative, which is supported by the Council of the European Union, aims to support greater engagement of the civilian AI community in mitigating the unintended consequences of civilian AI research and innovation for peace and security. As part of that initiative, SIPRI and UNODA are organising a series of capacity building workshops for STEM students (at PhD and Master levels). These workshops aim to provide the opportunity for up-and-coming AI practitioners to work together and with experts to learn about a) how peaceful AI research and innovation may generate risks for international peace and security; b) how they could help prevent or mitigate those risks through responsible research and innovation; c) how they could support the promotion of responsible AI for peace and security.”