Grant Wang
Williamsville East High School
East Amherst, NY
MLOffense: Multilingual Offensive Language Detection and Target Identification on Social Media Using Graph Attention Transformer
Grant Wang adapted a machine-learning model to identify offensive content in social media postings in 100 languages. Unlike previous models that focus only on offensive keywords, his model examines the context of the entire sentence to gain a nuanced understanding of the writer’s intent. Currently, most similar tools work only in English.
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Grant Wang, 17, of East Amherst, created an A.I. model to detect offensive content posted on social media in 100 languages for his Regeneron Science Talent Search behavioral and social sciences project. To develop his software, Grant trained a machine learning tool to understand phrases and sentences in each language and learn what constitutes an offensive sentence.
Grant’s software augments other existing tools that currently detect such content, only in English, to detect offensive language in other languages as well.
Unlike previous models that focus only on offensive keywords, his model examines the context of the entire sentence so that his system gains a nuanced understanding of the writer’s intent. In addition, it identifies the target of the offensive language, thus becoming a sophisticated evaluator of the post.
Grant plays varsity tennis at Williamsville East High School and is a USTA nationally ranked player. He has represented the United States at the International Linguistics Olympiad twice, winning a team silver medal in 2023. The founder of a social justice group, Grant advocates for refugees in ten countries and has made presentations at the United Nations. His parents are Zhiyuan Wang and Lei Ying.
Beyond the Project
Grant traveled to Bulgaria to compete in the 2023 International Linguistics Olympiad as one of eight United States team members. In 2022, he was on the Olympiad team that competed on the Isle of Man, off the coast of England.
FUN FACTS: Grant really enjoys competing in trivia contests and, ultimately, he hopes one day to find himself testing his skills on the stage of “Jeopardy!”
