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Emojis are graphic symbols or ideograms that represent not only facial expressions, but also ideas and concepts. Emojis are extremely popular worldwide, primarily in chat and social media. They can appear as an additional element in the sentence, as in "I liked the cake 😊", or replacing a word, as in "I liked the 🍰". From the perspective of large language models (LLMs), emojis are interesting because they convey a semantic as well as a pragmatic meaning. Read more

Chatbots, although a trendy product now, have existed for decades. Advances in AI have transformed chatbots from simple and rule-based systems to more complex and sophisticated conversational agents. Let’s dive into the history of chatbots, from their beginnings to the modern AI-driven companions we see today. ELIZA: The first chatbot (1966) ELIZA was the first chatbot, developed by professor Joseph Weizenbaum at MIT. ELIZA was designed to mimic a psychotherapist, responding to users' messages with pre-defined responses using pattern matching. Read more

Personality is the enduring set of characteristics or qualities that form a person’s distinctive character. The science of personality has been long studied by psychologists, and multiple tests have been designed to assess personality constructs. Interestingly, many of these tests follow a linguistic approach, since they are based on a factor analysis of the language used to describe behavior. For example, if someone says they like to “have everything organized and planned”, that would correlate with a conscientious personality trait. Read more

Programming languages are systems of notation used for writing computer programs (e.g., Java), whereas natural languages are systems of communication that have developed naturally in human communities (e.g., French). Despite both of them being languages, little is known about whether learning a programming language is similar to learning a natural language. What does the research say? Traditionally, learning programming languages has been associated with mathematical skills. In fact, this is what happens in most STEM degrees, where students are required to have a solid background in algebra, calculus, and other branches of mathematics. Read more

If you ask Amazon Alexa if it is a woman, it will answer "I'm not a woman, I'm an AI". In fact, the majority of AI virtual assistants are designed to be genderless (think of AI virtual assistants like Siri, Cortana, or Google Assistant). After all, they are simply made of code. Surprisingly, most of these AI virtual assistants use clear female voices when interacting with users. But, why is that? Read more