SRI Seminar Series: Kyle Mahowald

Our weekly SRI Seminar Series welcomes Kyle Mahowald, an assistant professor of linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin whose research spans computational linguistics, cognitive science, and machine learning.

In this talk, Mahowald will explore how experiments with filtered pretraining and mechanistic interpretability can shed light on the structure of human language. By using language models as tools for scientific inquiry, his work investigates whether—and how—these systems can offer meaningful insights into the mechanisms of human language processing.

Moderator: Avery Slater, Department of English and Drama

Talk title: How linguistics learned to stop worrying and love the language models

Abstract:

Language models have become adept at generating fluent and grammatically coherent English, prompting fundamental questions about whether their performance can inform our understanding of human language processing. I will describe a few recent experiments from my group, on how we can use filtered pretraining and mechanistic interpretability techniques to understand linguistic structure. Drawing from these findings and broader theoretical arguments in a recent position piece, I will argue that these kinds of experiments are linguistically informative.

Suggested reading:

• Futrell R, Mahowald K. “How linguistics learned to stop worrying and love the language models.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Published online 2025:1-98. doi:10.1017/S0140525X2510112X

About the speaker

Kyle Mahowald is an assistant professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin. His research interests include learning about human language from language models, as well as efficiency-based explanations of human language. Mahowald has published in computational linguistics (e.g., ACL, EMNLP, NAACL), machine learning (e.g., NeurIPS), and cognitive science (e.g., Trends in Cognitive Science, Cognition) venues. He has won Outstanding Paper Awards at EMNLP 2023, 2024, and 2025; a Best Paper Award at ACL; and the National Science Foundation’s CAREER award. He holds an M.Phil. in linguistics from Oxford, a Ph.D. from MIT in cognitive science, and did his postdoctoral training in the Stanford Natural Language Processing group.

About the SRI Seminar Series

The SRI Seminar Series brings together the Schwartz Reisman community and beyond for a robust exchange of ideas that advance scholarship at the intersection of technology and society. Seminars are led by a leading or emerging scholar and feature extensive discussion.

About the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society

The Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society is a research institute at the University of Toronto that explores the ethical and societal implications of technology. Our mission is to deepen knowledge of technologies, societies, and humanity by integrating research across traditional boundaries to build human-centred solutions.

Explore each session in advance by visiting SRI’s Events page.

Missed an event? Visit SRI’s YouTube channel to watch previous seminars.