{"pk":24334,"title":"Generative Semantic Transformation Process: A Case Study in Goal Prediction via Online Bayesian Language Inference","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Language understanding in the real world occurs through noise — often, lots of noise. What makes language understanding so robust? Here, we address this challenge with a\nnew approach. We cast language understanding as Bayesian inference in a generative model of how world states arise and project to utterances. We develop this model in a case study of action understanding from language input: inferring the goal of an agent in 2D grid worlds from utterances. The generative model provides a prior over agents' goals, a planner that maps these goals to actions, and a ‘language-renderer' that creates utterances from these actions. The generative model also incorporates GPT-2 as a noisy language production model. We invert this process with sequential Monte Carlo. In a behavioral experiment, the resulting model, called the Generative Semantic Transformation Process, explains evolving goal inferences of humans as utterances unfold.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"Artificial Intelligence; Cognitive architectures; Language understanding; Semantics; Bayesian modeling"}],"section":"Papers with Poster Presentation","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3fb4f9w1","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Lorenss","middle_name":"","last_name":"Martinsons","name_suffix":"","institution":"Yale University","department":""},{"first_name":"John","middle_name":"","last_name":"Muchovej","name_suffix":"","institution":"Yale University","department":""},{"first_name":"Ilker","middle_name":"","last_name":"Yildirim","name_suffix":"","institution":"Yale University","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2024-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/24334/galley/13931/download/"},{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/24334/galley/21206/download/"}]}