NLP Meets the World: Toward Improving Conversations With the Public About Natural Language Processing Research
This addresses the challenge for NLP researchers and the public in fostering accurate communication and sustainable growth in the field, but it is incremental as it builds on existing discourse without introducing new technical methods.
The paper tackles the problem of public misunderstanding of NLP by providing recommendations for researchers to communicate effectively about NLP capabilities and limitations, aiming to strengthen public understanding and support.
Recent developments in large language models (LLMs) have been accompanied by rapidly growing public interest in natural language processing (NLP). This attention is reflected by major news venues, which sometimes invite NLP researchers to share their knowledge and views with a wide audience. Recognizing the opportunities of the present, for both the research field and for individual researchers, this paper shares recommendations for communicating with a general audience about the capabilities and limitations of NLP. These recommendations cover three themes: vague terminology as an obstacle to public understanding, unreasonable expectations as obstacles to sustainable growth, and ethical failures as obstacles to continued support. Published NLP research and popular news coverage are cited to illustrate these themes with examples. The recommendations promote effective, transparent communication with the general public about NLP, in order to strengthen public understanding and encourage support for research.