Hi there,I hope you've had the chance to take some time off and relax recently. Here in the UK, things are starting to look up: the weather is getting warmer and the lockdown is easing slowly. I'm looking forward to meeting friends in person again and getting the chance to travel.Reading some of the outstanding papers at ICLR 2021—which cover topics from query answering to physics simulations—I can't help but be amazed by the overall progress in the field. I'm excited where this will take us. We don't need to look to a galaxy far, far away in order to witness an important dispute, however: The Char Wars, the fight between the hegemonic Subword Order and rebelling character models.Another topic that I'm excited about is speech. This newsletter looks at the role and importance of speech for NLP. Finally, with conferences this year generally staying virtual, I thought it'd be fun to think about how we can make them more social and interactive. Gather is nice but still doesn't come close to interacting with someone in person. So this newsletter includes some ideas for virtual social activities to engage with others around topics of common interest (focusing on ML and NLP).I really appreciate your feedback, so let me know what you love ❤️ and hate 💔 about this edition. Simply hit reply on the issue.If you were referred by a friend, click here to subscribe. If you enjoyed this issue, give it a tweet 🐦.
Share this post
ICLR 2021 Outstanding Papers, Char Wars…
Share this post
Hi there,I hope you've had the chance to take some time off and relax recently. Here in the UK, things are starting to look up: the weather is getting warmer and the lockdown is easing slowly. I'm looking forward to meeting friends in person again and getting the chance to travel.Reading some of the outstanding papers at ICLR 2021—which cover topics from query answering to physics simulations—I can't help but be amazed by the overall progress in the field. I'm excited where this will take us. We don't need to look to a galaxy far, far away in order to witness an important dispute, however: The Char Wars, the fight between the hegemonic Subword Order and rebelling character models.Another topic that I'm excited about is speech. This newsletter looks at the role and importance of speech for NLP. Finally, with conferences this year generally staying virtual, I thought it'd be fun to think about how we can make them more social and interactive. Gather is nice but still doesn't come close to interacting with someone in person. So this newsletter includes some ideas for virtual social activities to engage with others around topics of common interest (focusing on ML and NLP).I really appreciate your feedback, so let me know what you love ❤️ and hate 💔 about this edition. Simply hit reply on the issue.If you were referred by a friend, click here to subscribe. If you enjoyed this issue, give it a tweet 🐦.