UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Natural language processing (NLP) is an artificial intelligence (AI) technology that extracts meaning and structure from the kinds of language that people speak and write. It is the technology behind the chatbots, language translation apps and generative AI that makes computers seem as if they understand people, identifying and categorizing opinions on social media or answering the questions people pose in search engines.
A new course in the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) will ease undergraduate students into the concepts of NLP to help them discover how computers process language in a way that appears to make sense of human text. The course, “Understanding Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Human Language” (DS 402), will be taught by Shomir Wilson, associate professor in the College of IST, beginning spring 2025.
“I’m excited that we’re able to offer DS 402 with Professor Wilson,” said Lisa Lenze, associate dean for undergraduate studies in the College of IST. “The next generation of information technology leaders needs to understand how computers process human language.”
One of Wilson’s goals for the course is to help students understand recently published research about NLP. Conceptual reasoning, critical thinking and broader impacts will be prioritized over math and algorithms.
“We’ll focus on papers with practical and social impacts to make them as relatable as possible to the AI that we use or that affects us in everyday life,” Wilson said. “There will also be a practical component to the course, where students build NLP systems to solve tasks from competitions that are organized by the research community.”
As part of a semester-long project, students will build NLP systems to perform a variety of tasks, including solving word puzzles, detecting hallucinations by chatbots, spoiling clickbait headlines and analyzing internet memes.
“Undergraduate students majoring in data sciences can use this course as an advanced elective, and students enrolled in another College of IST major can use this course in their application focus area,” Lenze said. “Those enrolled in the course are in for an intriguing and exciting learning experience!”
More information can be found on the course website.