Data Science and Machine Translation w/ John DeNero

<p>We&#39;ve been told time and time again that we need to understand data in context: it&#39;s an ethical imperative. Not every language gets an LLM; not every population fully understands a technology that&#39;s deployed in their community with or without everyone&#39;s consent; and certainly we&#39;re told that we will make better, safer conclusions with our data if we understand the context. John DeNero looks at things differently: instead of an ethical imperative for understanding data in context, John talks about a structural one. For example, accurately translating language necessitates understanding the context. It&#39;s almost as if he read a bunch of French critical theory, thought about deconstruction, and realized that a structural imperative has an ethical valence as well—and vice versa. It&#39;s not a paradox, it&#39;s deconstruction. </p><p>This interview covers John&#39;s work as a professor of data science and computer science, his experience as a senior research scientist at Google Translate, thoughts on AI and language, and keeping up with the slang of today&#39;s youth. </p><p>John DeNero is the Faculty Director of <a href="https://data.berkeley.edu/academics/undergraduate-programs" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">Data Science Undergraduate Studies</a> (DSUS) and Associate Teaching Professor in the <a href="https://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">UC Berkeley EECS department</a>. He is the co-founder and Chief Scientist at<a href="https://lilt.com/" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer"> lilt. </a></p><p><a href="https://denero.org/" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">John&#39;s website </a></p><p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=eAwnN44AAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">Google Scholar</a></p><p><a href="https://aclanthology.org/P12-1016.pdf" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">A Class-Based Agreement Model for Generating Accurately Inflected Translations</a></p><p><a href="https://www.sessions.blue/">⁠Music by Blue Dot Sessions ⁠</a>(https://www.sessions.blue/)</p><p><br></p><p>This episode is dedicated to MukhammadAziz Umurzokov and Ella Cook, the two Brown University students who passed away on December 13th, 2025. </p><p><br></p>