Harnessing the Power of Artificial Intelligence to Vitalize Endangered Indigenous Languages: Technologies and Experiences

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Pinhanez, Claudio, Cavalin, Paulo, Storto, Luciana, Finbow, Thomas, Cobbinah, Alexander, Nogima, Julio, Vasconcelos, Marisa, Domingues, Pedro, Mizukami, Priscila de Souza, Grell, Nicole, Gongora, Majoí, Gonçalves, Isabel
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Pinhanez, Claudio
Cavalin, Paulo
Storto, Luciana
Finbow, Thomas
Cobbinah, Alexander
Nogima, Julio
Vasconcelos, Marisa
Domingues, Pedro
Mizukami, Priscila de Souza
Grell, Nicole
Gongora, Majoí
Gonçalves, Isabel
author_facet Pinhanez, Claudio
Cavalin, Paulo
Storto, Luciana
Finbow, Thomas
Cobbinah, Alexander
Nogima, Julio
Vasconcelos, Marisa
Domingues, Pedro
Mizukami, Priscila de Souza
Grell, Nicole
Gongora, Majoí
Gonçalves, Isabel
contents Since 2022 we have been exploring application areas and technologies in which Artificial Intelligence (AI) and modern Natural Language Processing (NLP), such as Large Language Models (LLMs), can be employed to foster the usage and facilitate the documentation of Indigenous languages which are in danger of disappearing. We start by discussing the decreasing diversity of languages in the world and how working with Indigenous languages poses unique ethical challenges for AI and NLP. To address those challenges, we propose an alternative development AI cycle based on community engagement and usage. Then, we report encouraging results in the development of high-quality machine learning translators for Indigenous languages by fine-tuning state-of-the-art (SOTA) translators with tiny amounts of data and discuss how to avoid some common pitfalls in the process. We also present prototypes we have built in projects done in 2023 and 2024 with Indigenous communities in Brazil, aimed at facilitating writing, and discuss the development of Indigenous Language Models (ILMs) as a replicable and scalable way to create spell-checkers, next-word predictors, and similar tools. Finally, we discuss how we envision a future for language documentation where dying languages are preserved as interactive language models.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_12620
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Harnessing the Power of Artificial Intelligence to Vitalize Endangered Indigenous Languages: Technologies and Experiences
Pinhanez, Claudio
Cavalin, Paulo
Storto, Luciana
Finbow, Thomas
Cobbinah, Alexander
Nogima, Julio
Vasconcelos, Marisa
Domingues, Pedro
Mizukami, Priscila de Souza
Grell, Nicole
Gongora, Majoí
Gonçalves, Isabel
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Since 2022 we have been exploring application areas and technologies in which Artificial Intelligence (AI) and modern Natural Language Processing (NLP), such as Large Language Models (LLMs), can be employed to foster the usage and facilitate the documentation of Indigenous languages which are in danger of disappearing. We start by discussing the decreasing diversity of languages in the world and how working with Indigenous languages poses unique ethical challenges for AI and NLP. To address those challenges, we propose an alternative development AI cycle based on community engagement and usage. Then, we report encouraging results in the development of high-quality machine learning translators for Indigenous languages by fine-tuning state-of-the-art (SOTA) translators with tiny amounts of data and discuss how to avoid some common pitfalls in the process. We also present prototypes we have built in projects done in 2023 and 2024 with Indigenous communities in Brazil, aimed at facilitating writing, and discuss the development of Indigenous Language Models (ILMs) as a replicable and scalable way to create spell-checkers, next-word predictors, and similar tools. Finally, we discuss how we envision a future for language documentation where dying languages are preserved as interactive language models.
title Harnessing the Power of Artificial Intelligence to Vitalize Endangered Indigenous Languages: Technologies and Experiences
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.12620