Podcast: Grounding, embodied AI and how cognitive science and linguistics mix with technology to aid meaning formation

This week I was a guest on the D4 Data podcast, managed and hosted by the wonderful Deepak John Reji. After several cancellations this winter, we finally made it happen! We discussed the basics of what grounding means for language, how children acquire their first language and what does that have to do with how the machines need to learn to understand, why cognitive science and linguistics are important when it comes to natural language processing research, technical tips about working with old research code and so much more.

Given the more broader field that this podcast serves rather than my tiny natural language understanding bubble, we gently went through a lot of foundations intentionally, instead of jumping in to discuss different model architectures and the like. I think this might make it understandable and enjoyable for people even entirely on the outside of the natural language processing field.

Here is a Spotify link if you listen to your podcasts there.

Below, embedded, is the same conversation in a video format, if that is your preferred way of consuming.