9 months, 9 universities #9: Generative search and biases: Challenges of a new information ecology

Arqus welcomes academics and students to the ninth instalment of the 9 Months, 9 Universities webinar series: “Generative search and biases: Challenges and opportunities of a new information ecology.” Tune in to the live broadcast on the Arqus RUclips channel on 18th June 2024 at 12:00 CEST.
Information retrieval is once again at a turning point in its long history: texts and images that used to be retrieved exclusively from collections of existing documents can now be synthesized on query. Thanks to recent advances in generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) in general and Large Language Models (LLMs) in particular, searchers can expect to be relieved of the manual task of identifying the relevant parts of retrieved documents and instead receive answers in the form of text or multimedia documents. This upheaval runs parallel to the perceived deterioration in the quality of results from traditional web search engines. For years, social media users have been complaining about the low relevance of search results from major search engines.
In the new 9 Months 9 Universities webinar, Professor Martin Potthast, Hessian.AI Chair for Deep Semantic Learning at the University of Kassel, will explore the role of generative AI in the renaissance of information retrieval. He will also delve into the new challenges it poses, emphasizing the need for a new framework to research, develop and evaluate these technologies.
Speaker
Martin Potthast holds the Hessian.AI Chair for Deep Semantic Learning at the University of Kassel, where his research focuses on language technologies, search engines and information analysis and synthesis. He studied computer science at the University of Paderborn and completed his doctorate at Bauhaus University Weimar.
After serving as a postdoctoral researcher and junior professor, he became a full professor at Leipzig University in 2023. Potthast is a founding member and board member of the ScaDS.AI Center for Scalable Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence. In April 2024, he was appointed Professor of Deep Semantic Learning at the University of Kassel and joined the Hessian Center for Artificial Intelligence, hessian.AI.
9 Months, 9 Universities is a new series of guest lectures that focus on specific topics related to language and culture and target mainly graduate and postgraduate students as well as early-stage researchers and lecturers interested in these topics. The lectures are intended to generate awareness and appreciation for the topic of multilingualism as well as an understanding of the many areas of our lives that are influenced by language.