Language and Speech Technology
This theme focuses on processing, analysing, and generating human language data using computers, which plays a crucial role in human-computer interactions and AI interpretation. It covers foundational knowledge, addresses scientific inquiries, and addresses practical challenges in designing and developing these technologies. Students will gain an understanding of both classic and modern techniques in language and speech processing, learn to develop (spoken) dialog and deliberation-support systems, and acquire the skills to design, develop, and evaluate language, speech, and dialog applications from technological, human, and ethical perspectives.
Year 1 |
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Quarter 1 |
Quarter 2 |
Quarter 3 |
Quarter 4 |
| Data management and Engineering | Software Engineering and Testing for AI Systems | Responsible Data Science and AI Engineering | Research course |
| Machine and Deep Learning | Theme 1 | Theme 1 | Theme 1 |
| Probabilistic AI and Reasoning | Theme 2 | Theme 2 | Theme 2 |
Credits: each course in a theme is 5EC, so each theme is 15EC.
Students choose 2 themes, each of which has 3 courses in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th quarters of the 1st year. For this theme, you will take the following courses:
Q2 - Natural Language Processing (NLP)
The Natural Language Processing course teaches you fundamental language processing concepts techniques including classic syntactic and semantic analysis and modern embeddings and contextual embeddings techniques. You will gain an understanding of classic and modern techniques for language understanding and generation and learn the skills to design, develop, and evaluate your own Natural Language Processing systems and applications.
Q3 - Inclusive Speech Technology
In Speech Technology you will learn fundamental concepts, techniques, and applications in speech technology, with a strong focus on fairness and inclusivity, i.e., developing speech technology that can be used by everyone, irrespective of how one speaks. The course teaches you the fundamentals about human speech production and processing, and automatic speech processing and production techniques with a focus on statistical methods. The focus of the course is on developing skills for developing speech-based applications. Knowledge will be obtained through interactive lectures; while research skills will be developed in weekly labs in which concrete speech technology applications will be build.
Q4 - NLP for Society
The knowledge and skills gained in the Natural Language Processing course and the Speech Technology course are the foundation of the NLP for Society course where you will expand your knowledge about language and speech and develop their skills for building dialog and deliberation-support systems that can facilitate societal exchange. Human and social factors such as arguments, stance, values, perspectives, and disagreement are the key elements of societal exchanges. The NLP for Society course introduces NLP techniques for computational modelling and analysis of such human and social factors in the context of dialog and deliberation-support systems.