Digital publication of Pr Benoît Sagot's opening lecture

Benoît Sagot

Teaching languages to machines

In the fall of 2022, the launch of ChatGPT put artificial intelligence at the heart of the news. Everyone was able to grasp the power of this conversational agent, but how it worked remained a mystery to many. This opening lecture lifts the veil on a field of research to which it owes its existence: automatic language processing, or ALP.

Step by step, the author takes us through the history of NLP to identify the current challenges facing this discipline, which is as old as computer science, and which strives to teach languages to machines. How did we arrive at machine learning, neural networks and generative models ? What ethical aspects require our vigilance in the face of accelerating research and innovation ? Ultimately, is ChatGPT really a revolution ?

Sagot B., Apprendre les langues aux machines, Paris, Collège de France, coll. " Leçons inaugurales ",^no 325, 2024.

A specialist in automatic language processing, Benoît Sagot is Director of Research at Inria and holds a chair at the Paris Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (PRAIRIE). He is a visiting professor at the Computer Sciences and Digital Technologies Annual Chair at the Collège de France, created in partnership with Inria.