NLP Meets the World: Toward Improving Conversations With the Public About Natural Language Processing Research

TL;DR

This paper offers guidelines for NLP researchers to communicate more effectively with the public by addressing terminology, expectations, and ethics, thereby enhancing understanding and support for NLP research.

Contribution

It provides practical recommendations for researchers to improve public communication about NLP, focusing on clarity, managing expectations, and ethical considerations.

Findings

Identifies key obstacles in public understanding of NLP.

Provides specific communication strategies for researchers.

Highlights importance of transparency and ethics in public discourse.

Abstract

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.