Episode 416 | Spence Green - Accessible Language

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Spence Green talks with Dave Rael about programming, natural langagues, motivations, education, and making knowledge accessible

Spence Green is the co-founder and CEO at Lilt, the first human-in-the-loop machine translation platform that uses neural MT to augment the work of human translators. Spence graduated from Stanford with a PhD in computer science. His research area focused on the intersection of natural language processing and human-computer interaction. He has published papers on statistical machine translation, statistical language parsing, and mixed-initiative systems and given talks on translator productivity. Lilt drastically lowers the cost and timespan of effective translation services so more businesses can operate in more countries, and governments can better communicate with constituents. This opens new doors to the global knowledge economy, addresses modern pain points in democratic processes, and drives Lilt’s vision of making information accessible online to everyone, beyond a lingua franca.

Chapters: 0:15 - Dave introduces the show and Spence Green2:50 - Spence's early experiences with and love of programming4:25 - Spence on running a business and not coding on a daily basis8:52 - The reasons for Lilt and motivations for making the world's knowledge and goodness more accessible13:18 - Origins of Spence's interests in natural languages17:36 - Spence's story of failure - many false starts on trying to figure out a working business model in a complex and challenging market25:03 - How Spence got involved with Google Translate27:47 - Spence on moving to the Bay area for graduate school30:56 - Spence's book recommendations35:37 - The things that have Spence most excited36:52 - Spence's top 3 tips for delivering more value39:56 - Keeping up with Spence and Lilt

Resources: Lilt The Lilt Blog Google Translate Tower of Babel Simon Harrer on Developer On Fire Unicode John DeNero Foundations of Statistical Natural Language Processing - Christopher D. Manning Chris Manning

Spence's book recommendation: The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done (Harperbusiness Essentials) - Peter F. Drucker Andy Grove: A Biography - Edward Ellis Andy Grove: The Life and Times of an American Business Icon - Richard S. Tedlow

Spence's top 3 tips for delivering more value: Learn how to write in a (different) language Embrace software maintenance There's a difference between software engineering and computer science