Understanding "Democratization" in NLP and ML Research

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Subramonian, Arjun, Gautam, Vagrant, Klakow, Dietrich, Talat, Zeerak
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866910633959620608
author Subramonian, Arjun
Gautam, Vagrant
Klakow, Dietrich
Talat, Zeerak
author_facet Subramonian, Arjun
Gautam, Vagrant
Klakow, Dietrich
Talat, Zeerak
contents Recent improvements in natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) and increased mainstream adoption have led to researchers frequently discussing the "democratization" of artificial intelligence. In this paper, we seek to clarify how democratization is understood in NLP and ML publications, through large-scale mixed-methods analyses of papers using the keyword "democra*" published in NLP and adjacent venues. We find that democratization is most frequently used to convey (ease of) access to or use of technologies, without meaningfully engaging with theories of democratization, while research using other invocations of "democra*" tends to be grounded in theories of deliberation and debate. Based on our findings, we call for researchers to enrich their use of the term democratization with appropriate theory, towards democratic technologies beyond superficial access.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2406_11598
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Understanding "Democratization" in NLP and ML Research
Subramonian, Arjun
Gautam, Vagrant
Klakow, Dietrich
Talat, Zeerak
Computation and Language
Computers and Society
Recent improvements in natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) and increased mainstream adoption have led to researchers frequently discussing the "democratization" of artificial intelligence. In this paper, we seek to clarify how democratization is understood in NLP and ML publications, through large-scale mixed-methods analyses of papers using the keyword "democra*" published in NLP and adjacent venues. We find that democratization is most frequently used to convey (ease of) access to or use of technologies, without meaningfully engaging with theories of democratization, while research using other invocations of "democra*" tends to be grounded in theories of deliberation and debate. Based on our findings, we call for researchers to enrich their use of the term democratization with appropriate theory, towards democratic technologies beyond superficial access.
title Understanding "Democratization" in NLP and ML Research
topic Computation and Language
Computers and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.11598