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<p><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Most of you will have gotten this, but you might not have scrolled down. Talk is titled “</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black">Title: Dialect as a Site of Bias: Probing Covert Racism in Language Models”.</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">-K<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"><b><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black">From:
</span></b><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black">Lingosu <lingosu-bounces+kbck=ling.ohio-state.edu@lists.osu.edu> on behalf of Kumar, Sachin via Lingosu <lingosu@lists.osu.edu><br>
<b>Date: </b>Thursday, April 3, 2025 at 3:57</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black"> </span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black">PM<br>
<b>To: </b>lingosu@lists.osu.edu <lingosu@lists.osu.edu><br>
<b>Subject: </b>[Lingosu] Fw: Guest Speaker Valentin Hofmann<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black">Hi everyone, <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black">I am a faculty member of CSE and hosting a speaker, Valentin Hofmann, on April 16. Please see the details below. If you would like to meet the speaker, please sign up using the link below. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black">Thank you,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black">Sachin<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:black">From:</span></b><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:black"> Cse-faculty on behalf of Antoine, Nodie via Cse-faculty<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Thursday, April 3, 2025 12:50 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> cse-faculty@lists.osu.edu; cse-staff@lists.osu.edu; cse-researchstaff@lists.osu.edu; Cse-grads@lists.osu.edu; cse-ptlecs@lists.osu.edu<br>
<b>Subject:</b> [Cse-faculty] Guest Speaker Valentin Hofmann <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Hi Everyone,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">We have a guest speaker named Valentin Hofmann, with University of Washington and Ai2 coming on April 16<sup>th</sup>. Hosted by Sachin Kumar. Please see more information below about date, time
and room location. Thanks.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black">Title: Dialect as a Site of Bias: Probing Covert Racism in Language Models</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black"> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:white"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#242424">Speaker: Valentin Hofmann, University of Washington and Ai2</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:white"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#242424"> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:white"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#242424">Date: April 16, 1pm</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:white"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#242424">Location: DL 480</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:white"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#242424">Remote Zoom Link:
</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:blue"><a href="https://go.osu.edu/valentin-hofmann-talk">https://go.osu.edu/valentin-hofmann-talk</a></span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:white"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#242424">Meeting Sign Up Link:
</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:blue"><a href="https://go.osu.edu/valentin-hofmann-meet">https://go.osu.edu/valentin-hofmann-meet</a></span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:white"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black">Website: </span>
<span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:blue"><a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/valentinhofmann.github.io/__;!!KGKeukY!y47bJzUiEv8M7LdkAJlLCOuBttCLO2ZpSQVSvWmZQM1QnLrnNzGAcj9kpEG0lEF6Kr-N1Ce6JRgalPwI1pTTwBtd9AyPBw$">https://valentinhofmann.github.io/</a></span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black"> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black">Abstract: <i>Language models are known to perpetuate systematic racial prejudices, making their judgments biased in problematic ways about groups like African Americans. While prior research has focused on overt
racism in language models, social scientists have argued that racism with a more subtle character has developed over time. It is unknown whether this covert racism manifests in language models.</i></span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><i><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black">In this talk, I will present recent research showing that language models embody covert racism in the form of dialect prejudice: they exhibit raciolinguistic stereotypes about speakers of African American English
that are more negative than any human stereotypes about African Americans ever experimentally recorded. I will talk about how these covert stereotypes are related to the attitudes that language models overtly display about African Americans, what harmful consequences
they can have, and whether they are addressed by existing methods for alleviating racial bias in language models such as human feedback training. Finally, I will discuss how dialect prejudice affects the reasoning capabilities of language models.</span></i><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black"> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black">Bio: <i>Valentin Hofmann is a postdoc at the Allen Institute for AI and the University of Washington. His work broadly focuses on the intersection of NLP, linguistics, and computational social science, with specific
interests in tokenization and socially aware language models. Previously, he was a PhD student at the University of Oxford and a research assistant at LMU Munich. During his PhD, he also spent time as a research intern at DeepMind and as a visiting scholar
at Stanford University.</i></span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Thanks,</span></b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height:11.25pt;background:white"><b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Lucida Calligraphy";color:#BA0C2F;background:white">Nodie Antoine</span></b><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#3F4443"><br>
Administrative Assistant<br>
Monday-Friday 8:00am-4:30pm<br>
<br>
</span><b><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#BA0C2F">The Ohio State University</span></b><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#3F4443"><br>
Department of Computer Science and Engineering<br>
395 Dreese Lab<br>
2015 Neil Ave, Columbus , OH 43210<br>
614-292-1878 Ofiice<br>
</span><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#BA0C2F;background:white"><a href="mailto:Antoine.28@osu.edu"><span style="color:#BA0C2F">Antoine.28@osu.edu</span></a></span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#3F4443"><img border="0" width="279" height="39" style="width:2.9062in;height:.4062in" id="x_Picture_x0020_1" src="cid:image001.png@01DBA493.FE6AEE10" alt="The Ohio State University"></span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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