Human innovation in language, such as inventing new words, is a challenge for pretrained language models. We assess the ability of one large model, GPT-3, to process new words and decide on their meaning. We create a set of nonce words and prompt GPT-3 to generate their dictionary definitions. We find GPT-3 produces plausible definitions that align with human judgments. Moreover, GPT-3\u2019s definitions are sometimes preferred to those invented by humans, signaling its intriguing ability not just to adapt, but to add to the evolving vocabulary of the English language.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Human innovation in language, such as inventing new words, is a challenge for pretrained language models. We assess the ability of one large model, GPT-3, to process new words and decide on their meaning. We create a set of nonce words and prompt GPT-3 to generate their dictionary definitions. We find GPT-3 produces plausible definitions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","footnotes":""},"msr-content-type":[3],"msr-research-highlight":[],"research-area":[13556],"msr-publication-type":[193716],"msr-product-type":[],"msr-focus-area":[],"msr-platform":[],"msr-download-source":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[],"msr-field-of-study":[],"msr-conference":[],"msr-journal":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-pillar":[],"class_list":["post-750244","msr-research-item","type-msr-research-item","status-publish","hentry","msr-research-area-artificial-intelligence","msr-locale-en_us"],"msr_publishername":"Association for Computational Linguistics","msr_edition":"","msr_affiliation":"","msr_published_date":"2021-6-1","msr_host":"","msr_duration":"","msr_version":"","msr_speaker":"","msr_other_contributors":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_pages_string":"","msr_chapter":"","msr_isbn":"","msr_journal":"","msr_volume":"","msr_number":"","msr_editors":"","msr_series":"","msr_issue":"","msr_organization":"","msr_how_published":"","msr_notes":"","msr_highlight_text":"","msr_release_tracker_id":"","msr_original_fields_of_study":"","msr_download_urls":"","msr_external_url":"","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_longbiography":"","msr_microsoftintellectualproperty":1,"msr_main_download":"","msr_publicationurl":"","msr_doi":"","msr_publication_uploader":[{"type":"url","viewUrl":"false","id":"false","title":"https:\/\/aclanthology.org\/2021.naacl-main.439","label_id":"243109","label":0}],"msr_related_uploader":"","msr_attachments":[],"msr-author-ordering":[{"type":"text","value":"Nikolay Malkin","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"guest","value":"sameera-lanka","user_id":556635,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=sameera-lanka"},{"type":"text","value":"Pranav Goel","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Sudha Rao","user_id":38341,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Sudha Rao"},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Nebojsa Jojic","user_id":32384,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Nebojsa Jojic"}],"msr_impact_theme":[],"msr_research_lab":[],"msr_event":[740920],"msr_group":[],"msr_project":[],"publication":[],"video":[],"download":[],"msr_publication_type":"inproceedings","related_content":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item\/750244"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/msr-research-item"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item\/750244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":765721,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item\/750244\/revisions\/765721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=750244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"msr-content-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-content-type?post=750244"},{"taxonomy":"msr-research-highlight","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-highlight?post=750244"},{"taxonomy":"msr-research-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-area?post=750244"},{"taxonomy":"msr-publication-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-publication-type?post=750244"},{"taxonomy":"msr-product-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-product-type?post=750244"},{"taxonomy":"msr-focus-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-focus-area?post=750244"},{"taxonomy":"msr-platform","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-platform?post=750244"},{"taxonomy":"msr-download-source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-download-source?post=750244"},{"taxonomy":"msr-locale","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-locale?post=750244"},{"taxonomy":"msr-post-option","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-post-option?post=750244"},{"taxonomy":"msr-field-of-study","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-field-of-study?post=750244"},{"taxonomy":"msr-conference","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-conference?post=750244"},{"taxonomy":"msr-journal","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-journal?post=750244"},{"taxonomy":"msr-impact-theme","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-impact-theme?post=750244"},{"taxonomy":"msr-pillar","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-pillar?post=750244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}