Ted Pedersen - Current Research Interests
I have a pretty long history of research in developing and evaluating a variety of methods in Natural Language Processing,
most often involving problems of semantics or meaning. Examples have included word sense disambiguation and semantic similarity.
That said, I am no longer actively pursuing this type of research.
In more recent years, since about 2020, I have become far more interested in the social impacts of
Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence. This leads to research questions that explore
the possible harms of different kinds of language technology, and the historical trends and ethical
foundations (or lack thereof) that lead to the decisions to develop and use these kinds of technologies.
Work that I particularly admire that is related to my interests includes that of Ruha Benjamin,
Simone Browne, and Safiya Noble. Of course this is not meant to be an exclusive list, but it is meant to provide
starting points for research that resonates with me and that I find especially motivating and inspiring.
If you are curious about these kinds of issues I would suggest starting with the following :
If you are a current or prospective UMD graduate student interested in
working with me on a project or thesis, or you are an undergraduate
student interested in working on a UROP under my direction, then you
should share these kinds of interests. If
you do (or you aren't sure) please investigate at least one of the above
and see what you think. If you find some points of interest please let
me know so we can discuss.
April 2023
By:
Ted Pedersen
- tpederse AT d umn edu