Report on the 1st Symposium on NLP for Social: Good (NSG 2023)

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI), specifically, Natural Language Processing (NLP) is being hailed as a new breeding ground for immense innovation potential. Researchers believe that NLP-based technologies could help to solve societal issues such as equality and inclusion, education, health, and hunger, climate action etc., and many more. Tackling these questions requires a concerted, collaborative effort across all sectors of society. The first Symposium on NLP for Social Good (NSG) was a novel effort that aimed to enable NLP researchers and scholars from inter-disciplinary field who want to think about the societal implications of their work for solving humanitarian and environmental challenges. The objective of the symposium was to support fundamental research and engineering efforts and empower the social sector with tools and resources, while collaborating with partners from all sectors to maximise effect in solving problems within public health, nature & society, accessibility, crisis response etc. In its inception, we invited speakers from academia and industry to provide an overview of some areas from NLP applications such as education, healthcare and legal domains in order to provide a platform to stimulate discussion regarding the current state of NLP in these varied fields. Date : 8--9 June 2023. Website : https://nlp4social.github.io/nlp4socialgood/.