The Roadmap goes ever on and onDown from the institute where it began.Now far ahead the Roadmap has gone,And we must follow, if we can,Pursuing it with eager feet,Until it joins some larger wayWhere many paths and errands meet.And whither then? I cannot say.

Frodo’s song, free after J.R.R. Tolkien

HLT-ROADMAPPINGthe Low Lands and Europe

• Antal van den Bosch– Language technology– Machine Learning– Tilburg University

• Arjan van Hessen– Speech technology– Twente University– Telecats

HLT ROADMAPS, THEN AND NOW

• HLT roadmaps in the Low Countries & EU– Then, now, plans for the future

• HLT: broadly or narrowly speaking?– Overlap with HCI, AI– Application areas: Health, security, gaming– Software engineering– Whither fundamental research?

• New roadmaps– In the African context

ELSNET ROADMAP (2002)

ROADMAP (TECHNOLOGY)

Fundamental HLT

HLTPilots

HLTApplications

Machine Learning

Emotion detection

Image processing

Database Technology

Information Retrieval

Workflow systems

PABX

Education control

Serious gaming

ROADMAP (PARTNERS)

Fundamental HLT

HLTPilots

HLTApplications

Users

1990-2000

• Strong focus on academic research.• Collaboration of academia with the research

departments of some (big) industries

ResourcesCelex (1986 – 2001)Batavo (2000)Corpus Spoken Dutch (1998-2004)Twente News Corpus (1998 - )

Infrastructure & NetworkingElsnet (1991 – 2004)NOTaS (2000 - )

Fundamental LST-researchSPIN (NL 1988-1994)TST (NL 1995-2000)Korte Termijn Programma’s (FL)

RESEARCHSignal processing

Speech processing

Phonetic research

G2P

Parsing

Semantic web

2000-2010

• Technology becomes mature and useful• Applications move from the academic labs to

industrial labs, (commercial) pilots and real world applications.

• Because basic HLT starts to work, “adjacent” technologies become interested too!

• Scientific programs reflect these developments: industrial partners are moving in

2000-2010Programme Description Sponsors

IOP-MMI(1999-2009)

Man-Machine Interaction

IMIX (2002-2008)

Interactive Multimodal Information eXtraction

CATCH (2004-2008)

Continuous Access to Cultural Heritage

CATCH Plus (2008-2010)

Transfer from CATCH-research CATCH-applications

CATCH II (2008-2012)

Moving from Cultural Heritage Humanities

MultimediaN(2002-2008)

Solving fundamental questions of Multi-mediaN

STEVIN (2005-2011)

Dutch-Flemish Research Programme for Dutch Language and Speech Technology

CURRENT STATE & NEAR FUTURE

• Because HLT is “working” (although not perfect), less money is available for fundamental HLT-research– Tendency to stress what already works is

strengthened by valorisation demands • HLT is used as an enabling technology– In various application areas (education, cure&care,

humanities, governmental structures, safety, etc)• In most new (National AND International)

programmes, HLT is part of the research: not the main part of it!– Again, tendency to stress what already works, to be a

useful partner

FROM TECHNOLOGY TO CLIENTS

BE PREPARED

• As an HLT community, be prepared to step into other large initiatives

• In other areas, such as– Occasional national funding possibilities– Multidisciplinary opportunities

• With social sciences, life sciences, exact sciences, humanities

• E.g. NWO: three areas, large-scale– Resource / infrastructure funds

• NWO Groot / Middelgroot• Hercules• ESFRI

SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

There is a substantial gap between

• Academic hacking and• Real software development

– Software architecture design– Choices of frameworks,

standards, languages– Programming– Unit testing and quality

control– Release– Bug reporting– Maintenance

WHITHER FUNDAMENTAL RESEARCH?

• HLT shares fundaments with– AI, HCI, cognitive science– [applied|theoretical|socio|psycho] linguistics– We share some deep, fundamental challenges

• If we want to continue being innovative, we NEED to tie in with– Reasoning, planning, & search– Common sense & world knowledge– Human factors in HCI

• Else, we stop being a field of innovation

A FRESH ROADMAP

• For South Africa– Learning from past: Low Countries / EU– Some fundamental choices:

• Alliances with other fields• Software, resources• Fundamental research goals

– Utilizing current initiatives• NHN (http://www.meraka.org.za/nhn)• AfLaT (http://www.aflat.org)• ALT-I (http://www.alt-i.org)• Bisharat (http://www.bisharat.net)• Anloc (http://www.africanlocalisation.net)

THE AFRICAN CONTEXT

• Language technology researchers for African languages over the continent face typical, similar problems:– Complex morphology– Noun classes– Encoding– Tonality– Resource-scarceness

• But no central point to access information (e.g. links, forums, publications)

• 1 central resource point might improve visibility of African Language Technology

AFLAT.ORG

• Community-driven portal dedicated to language (and speech) technology for African languages

• Share information (own work, interesting links to other people’s works)

• Backbone = drupal content management

DEVELOPMENTS

Spoken Command&Control

Dictation in controlled environments

Traintable informationWhen both hands are needed

DEVELOPMENTS

Spelling control

Lip reading

Educational softwareAutomatic summarization

Translation software

Searching in large audio-data

REAL WORLD APPLICATIONS

Zorg, care en cure, open democracy, education, heritage,

Bio food,

Road map coming from stevin demo

ORAL HISTORY

Buchenwald

digitalized(historic) collections

H.M. KoninginWilhelmina

Digital recorded collections

Second Feministic Wave

Memories of Indonesia

SPOKEN AND WRITTEN SELF SERVICE

Getting your daily newspaper if it was not delivered,

by identifying yourself over the telephone (Speech Recog)

In the evening the “newspaper” is calling you to

ask if everything is ok.If not, a human is taking over.

SPEECH ANALITICS

What is the reason you are of calling us?

Analyzing 40K calls/per day in call centres,

to tell the management why people are calling.

REAL WORLD APPLICATIONS

• GemeenteConnect: asking questions to your local authorities

• Q-A on the web: asking questions in a “natural way”

• HLT for dyslectic children (6 – 12 year)• Monitoring elderly patients by Q-A over the

phone• 48 other RW application recently described

CURRENT STATE

• The economic potential and societal importance of language and speech technologies in Services and ICT– In information and communication, people are naturally drawn

to the means that nature gave them to express messages in natural language, and to understand the messages of others.

– While having embraced the computer and new ICT technologies, and having acquired the ability to use the mouse and the desktop metaphor, people still have complex desires and questions that remain best expressed in the form of words.

– In order to offer their services in a maximally effective way, it is vital that computers step up from their current “silent” state into being talking and understanding “intelligent systems”.

QUESTIONS?•Why collaborate Low Countries and South Africa?•What’s in for me/you•Roadmap, but to what?•Economic efficiency, social issues, educational issues?