The First Workshop on Language-driven Deliberation Technology (DELITE 2024)

The DELITE workshop provides a forum for presenting new advances in technology around deliberation by addressing researchers in Natural Language Processing, human-computer interaction, corpus linguistics, political science and philosophy, as well as stakeholders and domain experts involved in integrating such technology into decision-making processes. The topic is particularly timely given the surge of Large Language Models in the last two years, which has heightened the awareness of the public to the potentials and drawbacks of language technology. On the one hand, LLMs are transforming the way that much AI research is carried out, and certainly in the way that it is understood (and questioned) by the public. But at the same time, it is also becoming clear that handling natural argumentation, particularly the sort of discussion found in deliberative settings, presents deep challenges for LLMs that are not likely to be overcome soon. The complex pragmatic structure of such discussions, nuanced presentation, framing and reframing of ideas, and resolution of differences of opinion all lay many orders of magnitude beyond the current parameterisation spaces of such models. As a consequence, it is likely that neurosymbolic approaches that combine the strengths of new LLM-style language processing with symbolic representations will be a primary means of delivering practical, useful deliberative technology solutions in the medium term.