Introducing VULCAN: A Visualization Tool for Understanding our Models and Data by Example

Examples are a powerful tool that help us understand complex concepts and connections. In computational linguistics research, looking at example system output and example corpus entries can offer a wealth of insights that are not otherwise accessible. This paper describes the open-source software VULCAN, a visualization tool for strings, graphs, trees, alignments, attention and more. VULCAN’s unique ability to visualize both linguistic structures and properties of neural models make it particularly relevant for neuro-symbolic models. Neurosymbolic models, combining neural networks with often linguistically grounded structures, offer a promise of increased interpretability in an age of purely neural black-box end-to-end models. VULCAN aims to facilitate this interpretability in practice. VULCAN is designed to be both easy to use and powerful in its capabilities.