Freya Hewett
Freya Hewett joined the ‘Public Interest AI‘ research project at the Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society in January 2021. Her research is focused primarily on AI related to language and linguistics.
During her Bachelor’s in Italian and English Philology at the Freie Universität Berlin, Freya specialised in sociolinguistics and wrote her thesis on conversation analysis in Italian WhatsApp messages. She then continued her studies at the University Potsdam, with the Master’s program Cognitive Systems, and completed modules on machine learning, computational linguistics and logical programming. Her thesis was on the automatic assessment of text complexity, with a specific focus on the conceptual complexity in German texts.
Prior to working at HIIG, Freya was a student assistant at the Department for Romance Languages at the University Potsdam and worked on projects related to Open Data and Digital Humanities.
Her dissertation examines how computational methods can be used in the context of text complexity, with the goal to make written texts more accessible using automated methods.
AI · Society & culturePublic Interest AI
The “Public Interest AI” research group is developing an operationalisable analysis procedure that will allow Public Interest to be defined in an AI-specific way...
Journal articles and conference proceedings
Hewett, F. & Asghari, H. (2024). Lowering the barriers: Accessible language and “leichte Sprache” on the German web”. encore Magazine, 2023/2024, 7-12. Publication details
Asghari., H., Hewett, F., & Züger, T. (2023). On the Prevalence of Leichte Sprache on the German Web. ACM WebSci ’23 Conference Proceedings, 147-152. DOI: 10.1145/3578503.3583599 Publication details
Hewett, F. (2023). APA-RST: A Text Simplification Corpus with RST Annotations. Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Computational Approaches to Discourse (CODI 2023), 173-179. Publication details
Hewett, F. & Stede, M. (2022). Extractive Summarisation for German-language Data: A Text-level Approach with Discourse Features. Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING), 756-765. Publication details
Asghari, H. & Hewett, F. (2022). HIIG at GermEval 2022: Best of Both Worlds Ensemble for Automatic Text Complexity Assessment. Proceedings of the GermEval 2022 Workshop on Text Complexity Assessment of German Text, 15–20. Publication details
Hewett, F., & Stede, M. (2021). Automatically evaluating the conceptual complexity of German texts. Proceedings of the 17th Conference on Natural Language Processing (KONVENS 2021), 228–234. Publication details
Other publications
Hewett, F. & Asghari, H. (2023). Lowering the barriers: Accessible language and “Leichte Sprache” on the German Web. Digital society blog. Publication details
Asghari, H., Birner, N., Burchardt, A., Dicks, D., Fassbender, J., Feldhus, N., Hewett, F., Hofmann, V., Kettemann, M. C., Schulz, W., Simon, J., Stolberg-Larsen, J., & Züger, T. (2022). What to explain when explaining is difficult. An interdisciplinary primer on XAI and meaningful information in automated decision-making. HIIG Impact Publication Series. Publication details
Hewett, F., & Stede, M. (2021). Lexica corpus, . Publication details
Hewett, F., & Nenno, S. (2021). How to identify bias in Natural Language Processing. Digital society blog. Publication details
Lectures and presentations
Komplexitätsmerkmale auf der Textebene: Eine systematische KorpusanalyseTagung: Einfach oder komplex? Befunde zur Passung geschriebener Sprache für verschiedene Zielgruppen. Institut für Deutsch als Fremdsprachenphilologie. Universität Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany: 22.03.2024 Further information
Freya Hewett
AoIR2023 (Session: AI-systems for the public interest). Temple University (TU), University of Pennsylvania (Penn). Sonesta Hotel, Philadelphia, USA: 18.10.2023 Further informationFreya Hewett
KI 2023 – 46th German Conference on Artificial Intelligence (Session: AI Systems for the Public Interest). Gesellschaft für Informatik (GI). Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft Berlin, Berlin, Germany: 26.09.2023 Further informationJudith Faßbender, Freya Hewett, Sami Nenno
APA-RST: A Text Simplification Corpus with RST AnnotationsACL 23: The 61st Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics. Association for Computational Linguistics. The Westin Harbour Castle, Toronto, Canada: 13.07.2023 Further information
Freya Hewett
Digital tools for text simplificationSeminar “Sprache als Schwelle zur Kunst? Kunstvermittlung und Konzepte einfacher und leichter Sprache”. Kunsthalle Osnabrück. Online, Osnabrück, Germany: 09.11.2022
Freya Hewett
Automatically evaluating the conceptual complexity of German textsKONVENS 2021 (Session: Automatically evaluating the conceptual complexity of German texts). German Society for Computational Linguistics and Language Technology, the Special Interest Group on Computational Linguistics of the German Linguistic Society and the Austrian Society for Artificial Intelligence. Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany: 09.09.2021 Further information
Freya Hewett
AI in the public interest: What does this mean and how can be build it?Gesellschaft für Informatik: #KICamp21. Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V.. Online, Berlin, Germany: 24.02.2021 Further information
Theresa Züger, Hadi Asghari, Freya Hewett, Judith Fassbender, Jakob Stolberg-Larsen
Organisation of events
AI-systems for the public interestAoIR 2023: AI-systems for the public interest. 18.10.2023. Sonesta Hotel, Philadelphia, USA (International) Further information
Hadi Asghari, Freya Hewett, Judith Faßbender, Theresa Züger
Shifting AI Controversies: Sind die KI-Kontroversen, die wir haben, die KI-Kontroversen, die wir brauchen?Workshop: Shifting AI Controversies. 05.10.2023. Humboldt Institut für Internet und Gesellschaft, Berlin, Germany. Co-Organised by: Zentrum für Medien-, Kommunikations- und Informationsforschung (ZeMKI, Universität Bremen) (National) Further information
Freya Hewett, Judith Faßbender, Theresa Züger
Hackathon. Entwicklung von KI-ErklärungsmodellenFrom 03.02.2023 to 03.02.2023. Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Berlin, Germany. Co-Organised by: neuland & gestalten (National) Further information
Daniel Pothmann, Sarah Spitz, Hadi Asghari, Sami Nenno, Freya Hewett, Judith Faßbender, Theresa Züger
AI and the Public Interest13.06.2022. Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Berlin, Germany (International) Further information
Hadi Asghari, Sami Nenno, Freya Hewett, Judith Faßbender, Theresa Züger
Participation as expert
Shifting AI Controversies: Sind die KI-Kontroversen, die wir haben, die KI-Kontroversen, die wir brauchen? Workshop: Shifting AI Controversies Humboldt Institut for Internet and Society. Humboldt Institut for Internet and Society, Berlin, Germany: 05.10.2023 Further informationFreya Hewett
Potenziale und Hürden inklusiver Chatbots am Beispiel des Chatbots Ina Potenziale und Hürden inklusiver Chatbots am Beispiel des Chatbots Ina Bertelsmann Stiftung & betterplace lab. Online, Berlin, Germany: 18.08.2022 Further informationFreya Hewett
Stakeholder-Dialog – Ethik der DigitalisierungStakeholder-Dialog – Ethik der Digitalisierung Stakeholder-Dialog – Ethik der Digitalisierung Berkman Klein Center, Digital Asia Hub. Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Berlin, Germany: 06.10.2021 Further information
Vincent Hofmann, Freya Hewett, Georg von Richthofen, Adrian Kopps, Bronwen Deacon, Matthias C. Kettemann, Wolfgang Schulz
Explainable AIExplainable AI Research Clinic – Explainable AI Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society. Coconat Gutshof, Bad Belzig, Germany: 08.09.2021 Further information
Vincent Hofmann, Jakob Stolberg-Larsen, Freya Hewett, Matthias C. Kettemann, Wolfgang Schulz, Theresa Züger
