Event Details

NLP has vastly improved in the last ten years. These advances can help us better understand history by deciphering old languages and text whose meaning we couldn’t understand before. In this talk, I’ll be presenting a couple applications of how we can use these techniques. First, we use a known-plaintext attack to decrypt a dictionary code used c.1800 for secret messages between US Army General James Wilkinson and agents of the Spanish Crown. Then, I’ll present a method for deciphering Chinese writing, with potential applications to other logographic languages.

Speaker Bio

Christopher Chu is a research engineer working on NLP at DiDi AI Labs. We're located about 500 feet away in the other Marina Tower. He has a BASc in robotics engineering, but decided that people are more interesting to talk to than robots. At DiDi Labs, we primarily work on dialog and translation, but branch out into fun projects like these.