CDT in NLP Distinguished Lecture Series: Dan Roth This lecture is hosted by the School of Informatics' UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Natural Language Processing. On Retrieving & Reasoning LLMs: Myths, Merits, and How to Move Forward Abstract The rapid progress made over the last few years in generating linguistically coherent natural language has blurred, in the mind of many, the difference between natural language generation, understanding, knowledge retrieval and use, and the ability to reason with respect to the world.Nevertheless, reliably and consistently supporting high-level decisions that depend on natural language understanding and heterogenous information retrieval is still difficult for fundamental reasons that range from computational complexity to data organization in the wild (and are here to stay).I will discuss some of the challenges underlying reasoning and information access and argue that we should exploit what LLMs do well while delegating responsibility to special purpose models and solvers for decision making. I will present some of our work in this space, focusing on supporting reasoning and information access via Neuro-symbolic methods. Biography Dan Roth is the Chief AI Scientist at Oracle and the Eduardo D. Glandt Distinguished Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Previously, Dan was a VP/Distinguished Scientist at AWS AI where he led the scientific effort behind Amazon’s first-generation GenAI products, including Titan Models, Amazon Q, and Amazon Bedrock. Dan is a Fellow of the AAAS, ACM, AAAI, and ACL, and a recipient of the IJCAI John McCarthy Award “for major conceptual and theoretical advances in the modeling of natural language understanding, machine learning, and reasoning.” He has published broadly in natural language processing, machine learning, knowledge representation and reasoning, and learning theory, was the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR) and has served as a Program Chair and Conference Chair for the major conferences in his research areas. Roth has been involved in several ML/NLP/GenAI startups in domains that range from legal and compliance to health care. Dan received his B.A Summa cum laude in Mathematics from the Technion, Israel and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Harvard University in 1995. Additional information This talk commence at 11:15, and will be held in person at the Edinburgh Futures Institute, Room 2.35, The University of Edinburgh.If you have any accessibility requirements please get in touch with Pauline.Patel@ed.ac.ukPlease note that this lecture will be recorded. Opportunities to meet with DanPlease note that if you are interested in meeting Dan, there are some opportunities on the 18th and 19th November outwith the lecture. Please contact Jeff (j.z.pan@ed.ac.uk) and Ivan (ititov@inf.ed.ac.uk) to make arrangements. Privacy StatementWe will use your personal data to allow us to process your registration and communicate with you about the event. We are processing the information about you for these purposes because by registering for the lecture, you are entering into a 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 Eventbrite's privacy policy can be found at: Eventbrite Privacy Policy | Eventbrite Help CentreIf you wish to attend this lecture but do not wish to register via Eventbrite, please email us at Pauline.Patel@ed.ac.ukWe will not share information about you with any other third party. We do not use profiling or automated decision-making processes.We will hold the personal data you provided us for 6 months.If you have any further questions, please contact Pauline.Patel@ed.ac.ukThis Privacy Statement is continued at Continued privacy notice | Data Protection. Nov 19 2025 11.15 - 12.15 CDT in NLP Distinguished Lecture Series: Dan Roth Distinguished Lecture by Dan Roth, Chief AI Scientist at Oracle and Professor at University of Pennsylvania. Edinburgh Futures Institute, Room 2.35, The University of Edinburgh 1 Lauriston Place Edinburgh EH3 9EF Reserve a spot
CDT in NLP Distinguished Lecture Series: Dan Roth This lecture is hosted by the School of Informatics' UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Natural Language Processing. On Retrieving & Reasoning LLMs: Myths, Merits, and How to Move Forward Abstract The rapid progress made over the last few years in generating linguistically coherent natural language has blurred, in the mind of many, the difference between natural language generation, understanding, knowledge retrieval and use, and the ability to reason with respect to the world.Nevertheless, reliably and consistently supporting high-level decisions that depend on natural language understanding and heterogenous information retrieval is still difficult for fundamental reasons that range from computational complexity to data organization in the wild (and are here to stay).I will discuss some of the challenges underlying reasoning and information access and argue that we should exploit what LLMs do well while delegating responsibility to special purpose models and solvers for decision making. I will present some of our work in this space, focusing on supporting reasoning and information access via Neuro-symbolic methods. Biography Dan Roth is the Chief AI Scientist at Oracle and the Eduardo D. Glandt Distinguished Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Previously, Dan was a VP/Distinguished Scientist at AWS AI where he led the scientific effort behind Amazon’s first-generation GenAI products, including Titan Models, Amazon Q, and Amazon Bedrock. Dan is a Fellow of the AAAS, ACM, AAAI, and ACL, and a recipient of the IJCAI John McCarthy Award “for major conceptual and theoretical advances in the modeling of natural language understanding, machine learning, and reasoning.” He has published broadly in natural language processing, machine learning, knowledge representation and reasoning, and learning theory, was the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR) and has served as a Program Chair and Conference Chair for the major conferences in his research areas. Roth has been involved in several ML/NLP/GenAI startups in domains that range from legal and compliance to health care. Dan received his B.A Summa cum laude in Mathematics from the Technion, Israel and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Harvard University in 1995. Additional information This talk commence at 11:15, and will be held in person at the Edinburgh Futures Institute, Room 2.35, The University of Edinburgh.If you have any accessibility requirements please get in touch with Pauline.Patel@ed.ac.ukPlease note that this lecture will be recorded. Opportunities to meet with DanPlease note that if you are interested in meeting Dan, there are some opportunities on the 18th and 19th November outwith the lecture. Please contact Jeff (j.z.pan@ed.ac.uk) and Ivan (ititov@inf.ed.ac.uk) to make arrangements. Privacy StatementWe will use your personal data to allow us to process your registration and communicate with you about the event. We are processing the information about you for these purposes because by registering for the lecture, you are entering into a 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 Eventbrite's privacy policy can be found at: Eventbrite Privacy Policy | Eventbrite Help CentreIf you wish to attend this lecture but do not wish to register via Eventbrite, please email us at Pauline.Patel@ed.ac.ukWe will not share information about you with any other third party. We do not use profiling or automated decision-making processes.We will hold the personal data you provided us for 6 months.If you have any further questions, please contact Pauline.Patel@ed.ac.ukThis Privacy Statement is continued at Continued privacy notice | Data Protection. Nov 19 2025 11.15 - 12.15 CDT in NLP Distinguished Lecture Series: Dan Roth Distinguished Lecture by Dan Roth, Chief AI Scientist at Oracle and Professor at University of Pennsylvania. Edinburgh Futures Institute, Room 2.35, The University of Edinburgh 1 Lauriston Place Edinburgh EH3 9EF Reserve a spot
Nov 19 2025 11.15 - 12.15 CDT in NLP Distinguished Lecture Series: Dan Roth Distinguished Lecture by Dan Roth, Chief AI Scientist at Oracle and Professor at University of Pennsylvania.
