The Graduate School of Informatics held its 2013 Open Course titled "Science of Language, Technologies of Language" at Research Building No. 8.
In this year's event, three faculty staff members from the Graduate School of Informatics lectured on topics centering around engineering and brain science before an audience of primarily junior and senior high school students.
After an opening speech by Dean Toru Sato, Professor Toshio Inui explained the purpose of the course.
A lecture session then followed. In the first lecture--titled "Can Computers Understand a Human Language!?"--Professor Sadao Kurohashi talked about the fun and challenges in dealing with the meaning of human words, citing the cases of a computer that answers human questions or another computer that defeats humans in a quiz show. In his lecture, titled "The Internet Connects the Languages of the World," Professor Toru Ishida talked about an agricultural project in which advice from Japanese agricultural specialists is given to Vietnamese farmers via the Internet through the collaboration of a computer that translates and human translators. Then under the title of "The Brain Mechanisms for Understanding Language," Professor Inui shed light on the mechanisms of the human brain, which communicates with language, showing a video clip about aphasia in which linguistic functions are lost.
Attending the event were about 170 participants, including junior and senior high school students, their parents, teachers, other students, and adults, who were actively involved in the lectures, taking notes and asking questions. The event ended on a successful note.
A scene from the event
