Distinguished Lectures in Humanities: Linguistic and Social Biases Impact Speech Communication in Human-Computer Interaction

Abstract

People are now regularly interacting with voice assistants (VAs), which are conversational agents that allow users to use spoken language to interface with a machine to complete tasks. The huge adoption and daily use of VAs by millions of people - and its increasing use for financial, healthcare, and educational applications - raises important questions about the linguistic and social factors that affect spoken language interactions with machines.

We are exploring issues of linguistic and social biases that impact speech communication in human-computer interaction - particularly during cross-language transfer, learning, or adaptation of some kind. In this talk, I will present two case studies illustrating some of our most recent work in this area. The first study looks at a case of cross-language ASR transfer. We find systematic linguistic and phonetic disparities in language transfer by machines trained on a source language to speech recognition of a novel target, low-resource language. The second study looks at a case of social bias in word learning by humans using voice-enabled apps. We find the word learning is inhibited when there are mismatching social cues presented by the voice and the linguistic information.

Together, along with highlights from other ongoing work in my lab, the aim of this talk is to underscore that human-computer linguistic communication is a rich testing ground for investigating issues in speech and language variation. Examining linguistic variation during HCI can enrich and elaborate linguistic theory, as well as present opportunities for linguists to provide insights for improving both the function and fairness of these technologies.

About the speaker

Georgia ZELLOU is a Professor of Linguistics at UC Davis.

The goal of Prof. ZELLOU’s research is to understand how and why speech sounds vary across languages and during communication. Her research program addresses foundational questions in phonetic theory, and theories of the underpinnings of phonological variation and change, with applications to language acquisition and speech technology. Prof. ZELLOU served as co-Director of the 2019 LSA Linguistic Institute at UC Davis and was inducted as a Fellow of the Linguistic Society of America in 2020 for this role. She is currently co-Editor-in-Chief for Linguistics Vanguard. She has served on several LSA committees, including the Public Relations Committee, the Awards Committee, the Committee on Institutes and Fellowships, and the Committee for Editors of Linguistics Journals.