Distinguished Lecture - hosted by UKRI CDT in Natural Language Processing

Lecture : "Model Flows: Powering AI of Science and Science of AI"

You are warmly invited to attend a Distinguished Lecture by Professor Noah Smith, UW Vice Provost for Artificial Intelligence, hosted by the School of Informatics’ UKRI CDT in Natural Language Processing, on 25th March 2026.

The lecture, in G07 from 3pm-4pm, will be followed by a reception until 5pm in the Atrium.

Note: the event is only open to students & staff of the University of Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt University.

Title:

"Model Flows: Powering AI of Science and Science of AI"

Abstract:

Neural language models with billions of parameters and trained on trillions of words are powering the fastest-growing computing applications in history and generating discussion and debate around the world. Yet most scientists cannot study or improve those state-of-the-art models because the organizations deploying them keep their data and machine learning processes secret. I believe that the path to models that are usable by all, at low cost, customizable for areas of critical need like the sciences, and whose capabilities and limitations are made transparent and understandable, is open development, with academic and not-for-profit researchers empowered to do reproducible science. In this talk, I’ll discuss some of the work our team is doing to open up the science of language modeling and make it possible to explore new scientific questions and democratize control of the future of this fascinating and important technology.

The work I’ll present was carried out by a large team at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Seattle, with collaboration from the Paul G. Allen School at the University of Washington, and co-led with Hanna Hajishirzi. The team is grateful for various kinds of support and coordination from many organizations, including the Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence at Harvard University, AMD, CSC - IT Center for Science (Finland), Databricks, Together.ai, the National AI Research Resource Pilot, Oak Ridge National Labs, the National Science Foundation, and NVIDIA.

Bio:

Noah A. Smith is a researcher in natural language processing and machine learning, serving as the Vice Provost for Artificial Intelligence, Charles and Lisa Simonyi Chair for Endowed Chair for Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technologies, and Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington and Senior Director of NLP Research at the Allen Institute for AI. He co-directs the OLMo open language modeling initiative and is the PI of the NSF- and NVIDIA-supported project “Open Multimodal AI Infrastructure to Accelerate Science.” His current work spans language, music, and AI research methodology, with a strong emphasis on mentoring—his former mentees now hold faculty and leadership roles worldwide. Smith is a Fellow of the Association for Computational Linguistics and has received numerous awards for research and innovation.

* * *

Please note:

Accessibility: Please let us know if you have any mobility, visual, or hearing requirements for attending this event, by contacting: cdt-nlp-info@inf.ed.ac.uk

If you would like to attend with BSL interpreters, please let us know asap by contacting cdt-nlp-info@inf.ed.ac.uk We acknowledge this event is being promoted close to its date and so it may be hard to find BSL interpreters. If you would like to come with BSL interpreters, please let us know and we will do everything we can to make arrangements: cdt-nlp-info@inf.ed.ac.uk

Photography/Recording: The event may be recorded through to the start of the Q&A session and may be photographed for promotional and recruitment purposes for use by the University and its approved third parties. If you do not wish to appear in photos/recordings, please notify the organisers on arrival or email: cdt-nlp-info@inf.ed.ac.uk

PRIVACY STATEMENT

Information about you - how we use it and with whom we share it:

We will use your personal data to allow us to process your registration, communicate with you and obtain your feedback about the event. We are processing the information about you for these purposes because by registering for the conference, you are entering into an contractual agreement for us to do so.

In order to facilitate online bookings for our events, we use Eventbrite - a third party service which is not operated by the University of Edinburgh. Details of their privacy policy can be found at: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/help/en-gb/articles/460838/eventbrite-privacy-policy/

If you wish to attend an event organised by us but do not wish to use Eventbrite please email us at: cdt-nlp-info@inf.ed.ac.uk

We will hold the personal data you provided us for 3 months.

We do not use profiling or automated decision-making processes.

If you have any questions, please contact cdt-nlp-info@inf.ed.ac.uk

This Privacy Statement is continued at: Continued privacy notice | Data Protection