Second Call for Papers

NLP for Positive Impact Workshop

Miami, USA

November 15 or 16, 2024

(co-located with EMNLP 2024)

https://sites.google.com/view/nlp4positiveimpact

Submission

Direct submission via ARR: link Deadline: August, 15th

For papers submitted to June (or earlier) ARR cycle: Commitment deadline to the Workshop: August 20, 2024 Commit to the workshop: via this link

Notification of Acceptance: September 20, 2024

Camera-Ready Papers Due: October 3, 2024

Workshop Date: either November 15 or 16

All deadlines are 11:59 PM (Anywhere on Earth)

Submission Information
We are using the EMNLP Submission Guidelines for the workshop. Authors are invited to submit a full paper of up to 8 pages of content with unlimited pages for references. We also invite short papers of up to 4 pages of content, including unlimited pages for references. Final camera ready versions of accepted papers will be given an additional page of content to address reviewer comments.

Summary 

The widespread and indispensable use of language-oriented AI systems presents new opportunities to have a positive social impact. NLP technologies are starting to mature to the point where they could have an even broader impact, supporting the UN sustainability goals by helping to address big problems such as poverty, hunger, healthcare, education, inequality, COVID-19 and climate change. 

Our workshop aims to promote innovative NLP research that will positively impact society, focusing on responsible methods and new applications. We will encourage submissions from areas including (but not limited to): 

• Work that grounds the impact of NLP: Beyond developing a better-performing NLP model, can we make a step further to connect the model to actual social impact? Example directions include: case studies of real-world deployments; or improving the deployment and maintenance of NLP models in practice.
  
  

• In addition to commonly recognized NLP for social good areas such as NLP for healthcare, mental well-being, and many others, we also call for work on neglected areas such as NLP for poverty, hunger, energy, climate change, among others.
   

• We also highly value work that builds on interdisciplinary expertise, and encourages submissions of case studies or worked examples that seek to expand the social impact of NLP through collaboration with other fields (e.g., philanthropy, social science, political science, economics, HCI). 

Special theme: This year, we would like to encourage submission providing solutions or concepts to address digital violence. Digital violence encompasses various forms of violence that utilize digital tools and media, such as cell phones, apps, internet applications, and emails, and occurs within digital spaces like online portals and social platforms. We aim to explore how modern NLP and AI technologies can contribute to enhancing safety in digital environments. At the workshop, you will have an opportunity to connect and share your results with NGO representatives from this field!

Submission types:

Thus, we would appreciate to see various types of works on this (but not only) topic like:

• automatic identification of various social needs, their corresponding sizes and demographics of people affected;

• position papers to propose promising new tasks or directions that the field should pursue;

• literature review of a subfield; 

• philosophical discussions of what how positive impact can be achieved with NLP methods; 

• approaches to interdisciplinary collaboration; 

• user study designs, user surveys; 

• ethical considerations, and other related topics.
  
  

Note that we want submissions to our workshop to have some distinctive features of social good implications, beyond a general paper on NLP. We will require each submission to discuss the ethical and societal implications of their work, and encourage a discussion of what "positive impact" means in the work.  

Organizers 

Zhijing Jin (Max Planck Institute & ETH Zurich)

Daryna Dementieva (Technical University of Munich)

Giorgio Piatti (ETH Zürich)

Steven Wilson (Oakland University)

Oana Ignat (Santa Clara University)

Jieyu Zhao (University of Maryland, College Park)

Joel Tetreault (Dataminr, Inc.)

Rada Michaela (University of Michigan)

Contact Email

• nlp4pi.workshop@gmail.com