#3 Hello World!
Welcome! This is the third issue of my newsletter, almost 1 year after the initial message. I am still figuring things out, but I thought it would be a nice way to share new things I found, as well as some of my thoughts on academia, my PhD journey, machine learning and NLP.
Short personal message
Since my last newsletter, I have become a father to a little boy. The last eight months have been truly exciting and filled with new emotions, challenges, and experiences!
PhD Progress - PhDone?
In November, I have finally submitted my PhD thesis (hoorah). Some numbers to put it in perspective:
Georgi being good at estimation:
At the end of my first year, I aimed at Sept'22 Submission. An error of 14 months. Youthful enthusiasm.
In my second and third year, I aimed at March'23. An error of 8 months. Getting better.
In Jan'23, I estimated submission in April'23. Error=7 months.
In March'23, I estimated submission in July'23. Error=4months
Writing progress:
It turns out I am not a good writer, at least not in the speed of writing. Nevertheless, some numbers:
Averaged about 440 words per day
Most words written in a day: 2793 (two weeks before deadline)
Most words deleted in a day: 184
Looking forward
Now that the thesis is submitted, I am looking into writing 2 more papers out of it (watch the space!). Moreover, I will hopefully have my viva soon, to start wrapping up the final phases of my PhD.
Georgi - Academic Update
Last year, we received a donation from Google, to continue developing the DEliBot project. Thanks to this donation, I will be building the next generation of DEliBots for 1 year as a post-doc at the University of Cambridge.
The DEliBot project - Big Updates
First fully-functional DEliBots
As the last part of my thesis, I have built and evaluated the first end-to-end DEliBots. Watch the space for a paper describing their architecture and applicability.
Outreach
Since my last update, the DEliBot project was presented at CardiffNLP Workshop, as an invited talk.
Bigger team
3 more people joined our DEliBot efforts, 2 from PennState University and a 1-year PhD at the University of Cambridge. Make sure to follow their work: https://www.delibot.xyz/team/
Google Funding
As mentioned earlier, we were recipients of a funding from Google to continue enhancing the capabilities of a DEliBot. We are looking to develop even better DEliBots, that tackle more real-world tasks in the next year.
DEliBot tools to the people
I have recently released a PyPi package, including some of the functionality needed to develop more deliberative dialogue systems. Github: https://github.com/gkaradzhov/delitoolkit Or just:
pip install delitoolkitFurther, we provided more ways to use and download DeliData.
Direct download link (with cleaned and improved formatting)
As part of delitoolkit:
pip install delitoolkit
from delitoolkit.delidata import DeliData
deli_corpus = DeliData().corpusAs part of HuggingFace Datasets:
from datasets import load_dataset
dataset = load_dataset("gkaradzhov/DeliData")
Check it out!
Call for participation: Under the spotlight
If one of the readers of this newsletter is working on something cool that isn't spoken too much of (pls no GPT pitches), please reach out, would be quite keen to talk about this and showcase your (and the field's) work in the newsletter.
Conclusion
Thank you all for joining my mailing list. If you feel like someone would benefit from the mildly educational content here - feel free to forward them the mailing list. In 1-2 months I will be sharing another big update, stay tuned!
Links
Website: https://gkaradzhov.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/G_Karadzhov
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgi-karadzhov/
PhD project: https://www.delibot.xyz/