Berkeley Biological & Artificial Language Lab (@BerkeleySCLab) header
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Lab @UCBerkeley for biological and artificial language. PI @begusgasper

Berkeley, CA
Joined March 2019
Photo by Berkeley Biological & Artificial Language Lab (@BerkeleySCLab)Photo by Berkeley Biological & Artificial Language Lab (@BerkeleySCLab)Photo by Berkeley Biological & Artificial Language Lab (@BerkeleySCLab)
We had a whale of a year🐳 We continue to explore language and intelligence in humans, animals, and machines -We uncovered vowels and diphthongs in sperm whales -We discussed what this means for law and anima rights -For the first time, LLMs can do recursion and metalinguistics
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Our lab in one of the most important exhibitions in the world.
I was ten when my parents first took me to the Venice Biennale. So wonderful to see that a few decades later I could contribute a small piece to the vast and beautiful world of art.
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Berkeley Biological & Artificial Language Lab retweeted
I was ten when my parents first took me to the Venice Biennale. So wonderful to see that a few decades later I could contribute a small piece to the vast and beautiful world of art.
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Berkeley Biological & Artificial Language Lab retweeted
Take a look back at our special 10th anniversary celebration of ARRIVAL (2016), featuring acclaimed filmmaker Denis Villeneuve in conversation with @ninabegus. Thank you to everyone who joined us for this unforgettable evening! Academy Museum film programming generously funded by the Richard Roth Foundation. This event is part of an ongoing collaboration by the Academy Museum and Berggruen Institute (@berggruenInst @NBerggruen) exploring the intersection of cinematic arts and technology, aimed to foster comprehensive discussions on technological, philosophical, social, and cultural transformations within filmmaking and beyond. ©Academy Museum Foundation, Photo by: Danny Flores
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Berkeley Biological & Artificial Language Lab retweeted
So thrilled @ninabegus is leading our Epistemic Cycles Lab @longnow.
Movie making, fiction, science come together to face the unknown. Watch Dennis Villeneuve and @ninabegus discuss the Arrival, past, present, and future.
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Berkeley Biological & Artificial Language Lab retweeted
Movie making, fiction, science come together to face the unknown. Watch Dennis Villeneuve and @ninabegus discuss the Arrival, past, present, and future.
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Berkeley Biological & Artificial Language Lab retweeted
Too funny: voiceless obstruents favoured after nasals; voiced obstruents favoured after voiceless obstruents; e.g.
“Lexicon against naturalness: Unnatural gradient phonotactic restrictions in Tarma Quechua” by Gašper Beguš, Aleksei Nazarov, Anna Björklund and Blas Puente Baldoceda (Oct. ’26) link.springer.com/article/10…
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Berkeley Biological & Artificial Language Lab retweeted
“Lexicon against naturalness: Unnatural gradient phonotactic restrictions in Tarma Quechua” by Gašper Beguš, Aleksei Nazarov, Anna Björklund and Blas Puente Baldoceda (Oct. ’26) link.springer.com/article/10…
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Berkeley Biological & Artificial Language Lab retweeted
The paper was 10 years in the making! Read it here: doi.org/10.1007/s11049-026-0…
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Berkeley Biological & Artificial Language Lab retweeted
kha, no sabía de esa restricción del quechua de tarma, locatso
In Tarma, Peru a very interesting dialect of Quechua is spoken. We analyzed the recordings and show that the dialect features one of the most intriguing phonotactic restrictions. Stops are voiced after a voiceless stop and voiceless after a nasal.
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Berkeley Biological & Artificial Language Lab retweeted
What happens to writing when machines can write? How are novelists, poets, and screenwriters responding to AI, and what does it mean for creativity, authorship, and the future of storytelling? Join us on November 18 at UC Berkeley Sutardja Dai Hall as we explore these questions through our new collection of essays, First Encounters with AI.
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Berkeley Biological & Artificial Language Lab retweeted
In Tarma, Peru a very interesting dialect of Quechua is spoken. We analyzed the recordings and show that the dialect features one of the most intriguing phonotactic restrictions. Stops are voiced after a voiceless stop and voiceless after a nasal.
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Berkeley Biological & Artificial Language Lab retweeted
Artificial humanities at the Artificiality Summit in Bend, Oregon
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Berkeley Biological & Artificial Language Lab retweeted
Why is philosophy thriving at Harvard amid generally low humanities enrollments
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Berkeley Biological & Artificial Language Lab retweeted
We're excited to be able to continue our work (with @begusgasper) on rethinking language, thanks to @schmidtsciences HAVI. We will test what properties of human language (sound change, dialect, and more) appear in nonhuman communication. This research lays the groundwork for reconceptualizing language as an evolutionary information technology applicable across human, animal, and machine communication.
UC Berkeley researchers are developing AI models that learn language by imitating speech, much like babies do. Their work could make AI more efficient while revealing new insights into how humans and other species communicate. bit.ly/4BeESMn
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Berkeley Biological & Artificial Language Lab retweeted
UC Berkeley researchers are developing AI models that learn language by imitating speech, much like babies do. Their work could make AI more efficient while revealing new insights into how humans and other species communicate. bit.ly/4BeESMn
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Berkeley Biological & Artificial Language Lab retweeted
Thank you for the feature @HarvardMagazine! We got so many Harvard alumni in this volume we failed to mention Gerardo Con Diaz (08) and Joseph Dumit (Prof) :)
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Berkeley Biological & Artificial Language Lab retweeted
Old conceptual frameworks need an update. Very excited to be awarded the Schmidt Sciences HAVI Award for "Rethinking Language" in collaboration with @ninabegus. Humanities have a bright future! @schmidtsciences
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Berkeley Biological & Artificial Language Lab retweeted
Imagitation it itself imagitation. Read this great book! @mthvn
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Berkeley Biological & Artificial Language Lab retweeted
Doomers unite.
If we believe in AI’s ability to control us, and AI is unable to do so, we lose little. If we don’t believe in singularity, and AI can in fact control us, we stand to lose everything. Wager, then, without hesitation, that AI is (able to control us)!
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