Glossodiversity and Artificial Intelligence

Glossodiversity and Artificial Intelligence

Endangered Language Preservation and the Future

of Smart Machines

Simon D. LevyComputer Science DepartmentWashington & Lee University

Lexington, VA 24450http://www.cs.wlu.edu/~levy

Endangered Language Preservation and the Future

of Smart Machines

Simon D. LevyComputer Science DepartmentWashington & Lee University

Lexington, VA 24450http://www.cs.wlu.edu/~levy

Biodiversity and Pharmacology

Biodiversity and Pharmacology

Biodiversity and Pharmacology

Biodiversity and Pharmacology

• Greatest plant biodiversity is in rainforests: 170,000 of the world's 250,000 known plant species.

• “We are trying to do biology knowing perhaps only a tenth, or one hundredth, of our species” – – Terry Gosliner, National Geographic

Biodiversity and Pharmacology

• Among top 10 most ecologically diverse countries on earth

• Third highest deforestation rate (1.1%) in South America (http://www.mongabay.com)

Biodiversity and Pharmacology

Language: A Window on the Mind

• Affects how we think about the world

• Amazing variety of ways of saying the “same thing”

• Counter-intuitive constraints not derivable (?) from more general principles

Fallacies & Pitfalls

• “Eskimo has over 100

words for snow.”

•“Primitive” languages

•Turing equivalence vs. Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

Example: Transitive vs. Ergative Languages

• English:

He saw herShe saw him

• Basque (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergative-absolutive_language):

Gizona etorri da."The man has arrived.“

Gizonak mutila ikusi du. "The man saw the boy."

Example: “Gender”

• English:

(1) Masculine

(2) Feminine

• Dyirbal (Dixon 1979):

(1) Animate objects, men

(2) Women, water, fire, violence

(3) Edible fruit and vegetables

(4) Miscellaneous

Example: Counting

Quantity !Kung Warlmanpa

1

r|e'e jinta

2

tsã jirrama

3

n!eni

4

Example: Counting

Quantity !Kung Warlmanpa Spanish English French

1

r|e'e jinta uno / pimero one / first un / premier

2

tsã jirrama dos / segundo two / second deux / deuxième

3

n!eni tres / tercero three / third trois / troisième

4

cuatro / cuarto four / fourth

quatre / quatrième

Languages Are Also Disappearing

• “Of the more than 6,000 languages currently being spoken, fewer than half are likely to survive the [21st] century”

– Douglas Whalen, Endangered Language Fund

• Appears to correlate with biodiversity (Lisa Manne, Ecology & Evolutionary Research 2003)

What Does This Have to Do with AI?

• AI is programs.

• Different programming languages express the same thing in different ways.• These differences constrain our ability to think about and solve

problems.

What Does This Have to Do with AI?

public static int factorial(int n) {

// Java version

if (n == 0)

return 1;

else

return n * factorial(n-1);

}

What Does This Have to Do with AI?

factorial(0, 1). % Prolog version

factorial(N, F) :-

N1 is N-1,

factorial(N1, F1),

F is N * F1.

Classical AI View

• Artificial flying machines don’t work like natural flying machines (birds, bats), so why should artificial minds work like brains?

So Where are the Artificial Minds?

• To make machines that think, we need [pace Minsky] to understand how the human brain/mind works.

The Bigger Picture

• We can’t (just yet) directly study how the brain works.

The Bigger Picture

We can use phenomena like language to broaden our view of how the mind works (what would an “ergative programming language” look like?)

The Bigger Picture

The languages most likely to give us these insights are the ones that are most endangered.

Let’s (Not) Get Carried Away…

Links

• Endangered Language Fund: http://sapir.ling.yale.edu/~elf

• International Clearing House for Endangered Languages: http://www.tooyoo.l.utokyo.ac.jp/ichel/ichel.html