October 13, 2022

UW’s Yejin Choi wins MacArthur Foundation ‘genius grant’

Yejin Choi, University of Washington professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, has been named one of this year’s MacArthur Fellows.

The fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation comes with an $800,000 stipend, commonly known as the “genius grant,” for recipients to use as they see fit. The Chicago-based foundation announced the 25 fellows on Wednesday.

Choi uses natural language processing to develop artificial intelligence systems that have the ability to reason and can understand the implied meanings in human language. AI often uses rules-based models, such as logic or probability. But Choi says that these rules are too rigid to make sense of the nuances that most people take for granted when they talk to each other.

Read the full article in UW NEWS.