(apologies for cross-posting)

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

Submission website: https://softconf.com/emnlp2022/NLPforPositiveImpact2022/

Important Dates

-

(Submission channel 1) Latest submission deadline to Softconf: Aug 15, 2022 -

(Submission channel 2; alternative) Latest ARR commitment deadline: Oct 2, 2022 (As the ARR site explains, authors can commit to venues when they have their reviews and meta-reviews. By Oct 2, you need to "commit" your ARR paper through Softconf, as in EMNLP 2022). -

Notification of Acceptance: Oct 9, 2022 -

Camera-Ready Papers Due: Oct 16, 2022 -

Workshop Date: Dec 7, 2022

All deadlines are 11:59 PM (Anywhere on Earth https://www.timeanddate.com/time/zones/aoe)

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 https://sdgs.un.org/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 encourage 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).

-

Work that guides researchers in NLP for Social Good: Can we provide insights and guidance to the field? Example directions include: measures of social impact; 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 social good is; 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) -

Laura Biester (University of Michigan) -

Dora Demszky (Stanford University) -

Mrinmaya Sachan (ETH Zurich) -

Joel Tetreault (Dataminr, Inc.) -

Steven Wilson (Oakland University) -

Lu Xiao (Syracuse University) -

Jieyu Zhao (University of Maryland, College Park)

Contact Email

-

nlp4pi.workshop@gmail.com