Speech and Language Technologies

For computers to serve humanity adequately they must be able to understand human speech and language. Only then will we have ...

• computers that can analyze large collections of documents, whether books, articles, letters, or emails, and discover information transformed into knowledge
• a world of Connected Health, where bio-sensing technology and data analysis is complemented by accurate and sensitive human-machine communication
• robots that understand spoken language put into service for the elderly and those needing physical aid

Neurocomputational Technologies

The mind is this century's scientific frontier. Exploring it with intelligent use of technology will give us ...

• brain-computer interfaces as communication aids for the locked-in and the disabled
• new tools for understanding language, emotion and the mind, yielding new information about human behavior

Why this technology matters to society

The advent of “big data” — huge document collections and large datasets derived from government and commercial sources, including social media sites, mobile phones and transaction data — is offering new ways to understand and predict human behavior. Can this potential be exploited for the good of society? What social policy opportunities are presented by big data? What are the dangers?

Nowhere is the "big data" problem more technically challenging than with text. Words, sentences, paragraphs and documents contain information vital to commerce, science, and public governance. "Big data" has begun to tranform science, especially the genomic- and neuro-sciences. The insights afforded by the analysis of large volumes of textual data are yet to be fully understood and appreciated. The social sciences have yet to reap the rewards of "big data."

Computational neuroscience is poised to give us the most significant window ever into the human mind and human behavior. As with "big data" we must ask: How do we exploit this potential for social good? How do we guard against intrusive and unethical exploitations of the mind?