Conference: Building scientific capacity for artificial intelligence

This project brings together teachers, researchers, and community members to shape how artificial intelligence (AI) is used for societal benefit. As new AI tools are developed to assist in language learning, translation, and related tasks, it is important to ensure these technologies are optimally deployed and informed by people who speak the specific languages in question. With community engagement, this effort lays the scientific foundation needed to explore how AI can work in low-data, linguistically complex settings. Through a three-day workshop, participants share experiences, learn from one another, and create recommendations that advance rigorous AI research. Other benefits to society include ensuring that emerging technologies open new directions for cutting-edge AI research and strengthen translational applications, including language acquisition and revitalization.

The project convenes a national, interdisciplinary workshop focused on AI practices in low-data language contexts. It addresses an urgent gap at the intersection of artificial intelligence, language sciences, and language documentation by connecting practitioners with researchers in language technologies. Through invited talks, panels, and breakout sessions, the event identifies promising practices and potential concerns, and produces guidance on AI development. The workshop supports strategic goals in AI by advancing methods for human-AI collaboration, low-resource model adaptation, and linguistically grounded evaluation in complex domains. Key outcomes include a position paper, concrete recommendations for institutions and funders, and the formation of an interdisciplinary working group to support sustained collaboration.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

Award Number: 2542375
Principal Investigator: Jared Coleman
Funds Obligated: $50,000
State: CA