@inproceedings{cunningham-etal-2024-understanding,
title = "Understanding the Impacts of Language Technologies{'} Performance Disparities on {A}frican {A}merican Language Speakers",
author = "Cunningham, Jay and
Blodgett, Su Lin and
Madaio, Michael and
Daum{\'e} Iii, Hal and
Harrington, Christina and
Wallach, Hanna",
editor = "Ku, Lun-Wei and
Martins, Andre and
Srikumar, Vivek",
booktitle = "Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2024",
month = aug,
year = "2024",
address = "Bangkok, Thailand",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2024.findings-acl.761",
doi = "10.18653/v1/2024.findings-acl.761",
pages = "12826--12833",
abstract = "This paper examines the experiences of African American Language (AAL) speakers when using language technologies. Previous work has used quantitative methods to uncover performance disparities between AAL speakers and White Mainstream English speakers when using language technologies, but has not sought to understand the impacts of these performance disparities on AAL speakers. Through interviews with 19 AAL speakers, we focus on understanding such impacts in a contextualized and human-centered manner. We find that AAL speakers often undertake invisible labor of adapting their speech patterns to successfully use language technologies, and they make connections between failures of language technologies for AAL speakers and a lack of inclusion of AAL speakers in language technology design processes and datasets. Our findings suggest that NLP researchers and practitioners should invest in developing contextualized and human-centered evaluations of language technologies that seek to understand the impacts of performance disparities on speakers of underrepresented languages and language varieties.",
}
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<abstract>This paper examines the experiences of African American Language (AAL) speakers when using language technologies. Previous work has used quantitative methods to uncover performance disparities between AAL speakers and White Mainstream English speakers when using language technologies, but has not sought to understand the impacts of these performance disparities on AAL speakers. Through interviews with 19 AAL speakers, we focus on understanding such impacts in a contextualized and human-centered manner. We find that AAL speakers often undertake invisible labor of adapting their speech patterns to successfully use language technologies, and they make connections between failures of language technologies for AAL speakers and a lack of inclusion of AAL speakers in language technology design processes and datasets. Our findings suggest that NLP researchers and practitioners should invest in developing contextualized and human-centered evaluations of language technologies that seek to understand the impacts of performance disparities on speakers of underrepresented languages and language varieties.</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Understanding the Impacts of Language Technologies’ Performance Disparities on African American Language Speakers
%A Cunningham, Jay
%A Blodgett, Su Lin
%A Madaio, Michael
%A Daumé Iii, Hal
%A Harrington, Christina
%A Wallach, Hanna
%Y Ku, Lun-Wei
%Y Martins, Andre
%Y Srikumar, Vivek
%S Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2024
%D 2024
%8 August
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Bangkok, Thailand
%F cunningham-etal-2024-understanding
%X This paper examines the experiences of African American Language (AAL) speakers when using language technologies. Previous work has used quantitative methods to uncover performance disparities between AAL speakers and White Mainstream English speakers when using language technologies, but has not sought to understand the impacts of these performance disparities on AAL speakers. Through interviews with 19 AAL speakers, we focus on understanding such impacts in a contextualized and human-centered manner. We find that AAL speakers often undertake invisible labor of adapting their speech patterns to successfully use language technologies, and they make connections between failures of language technologies for AAL speakers and a lack of inclusion of AAL speakers in language technology design processes and datasets. Our findings suggest that NLP researchers and practitioners should invest in developing contextualized and human-centered evaluations of language technologies that seek to understand the impacts of performance disparities on speakers of underrepresented languages and language varieties.
%R 10.18653/v1/2024.findings-acl.761
%U https://aclanthology.org/2024.findings-acl.761
%U https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2024.findings-acl.761
%P 12826-12833
Markdown (Informal)
[Understanding the Impacts of Language Technologies’ Performance Disparities on African American Language Speakers](https://aclanthology.org/2024.findings-acl.761) (Cunningham et al., Findings 2024)
ACL