Berkeley team wins Schmidt Sciences grant to rethink language with AI
begusgasper · x · 2026-10-21
UC Berkeley researchers Nina Beguš and Gašper Beguš received a Schmidt Sciences HAVI grant to continue rethinking language: testing whether properties of human language (sound change, dialect, and more) appear in nonhuman communication, framing language as an evolutionary information technology spanning human, animal and machine communication.
Their prior work builds AI models that learn language by imitating speech, much like babies do — potentially making AI more efficient while revealing new insights into how humans and other species communicate.
Related event: Berkeley Team Wins Funding to Decode Whale Language with AI(2 posts)→
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