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CultureBank: An Online Community-Driven Knowledge Base Towards Culturally Aware Language Technologies

1Stanford University2IBM Research

"Globally, people express pride, celebrate, and respect cultural diversity, while acknowledging and working towards reducing cultural bias"

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In this project, we explore the cultural awarenesss in language models. To this end, we introduce CultureBank, a knowledge base built upon users' self-narratives with 12k cultural descriptors sourced from TikTok and 11k from Reddit. With CultureBank, we evaluate different LLMs' cultural awareness, and identify areas for improvement. We also fine-tune a language model on CultureBank: experiments show that it achieves better performances on two downstream cultural tasks in a zero-shot setting. Finally, we offer recommendations based on our findings for future culturally aware language technologies.

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Region Distribution

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Topic Distribution

Social Norms and EtiquetteFood and DiningCultural ExchangeCommunication and LanguageMiscellaneousConsumer BehaviorHealth and HygieneCommunity and IdentityEnvironmental Adaptation and SustainabilityCultural Traditions and FestivalsCultural and Environmental AppreciationFinance and EconomyEducation and TechnologyFamily DynamicsHousehold and Daily LifeMigration and Cultural AdaptationSocial InteractionsLifestylesSafety and SecurityEntertainment and LeisureDrinking and AlcoholRelationships and MarriageBeauty and FashionFamily Traditions and HeritageWork-Life BalanceWorkplaceReligious PracticesTransportationTime Management and PunctualitySports and RecreationSocial InfrastructureDress CodesTravellingHumor and StorytellingPet and Animal CareHousing and Interior DesignTopic