AI’s Language Puzzle: Who Has the Telescope?
Consider the classic riddle: "I saw a man on a hill with a telescope." This simple sentence, which can mean two very different things, perfectly illustrates syntactic ambiguity. It's a…
Tag: natural language processing
The Red Squiggle: Linguistics of Spell Check
That familiar red squiggle under a misspelled word isn't magic; it's a marvel of computational linguistics. This post explores the hidden science behind your spell checker, from how it calculates…
AI’s Linguistic Blind Spots
AI language models can write poetry and translate languages, but their impressive abilities mask significant linguistic blind spots. Inheriting biases from their training data, these systems often perpetuate gender stereotypes,…
Hey Siri: The Unwritten Grammar of Voice Commands
Have you ever noticed you talk to Siri differently than you talk to a person? We've developed a unique "Machine Speak"—a stripped-down, command-based language that reveals a lot about our…
How Search Engines Read Your Mind: The Linguistics of Search
Every time you use a search engine, you're interacting with a sophisticated linguistic machine that does more than just match keywords. This post demystifies the linguistics behind search, explaining concepts…
The Chinese Room: Can a Machine Ever Understand?
John Searle's famous "Chinese Room" thought experiment poses a timeless challenge to the idea of a truly thinking machine. By exploring the crucial difference between manipulating linguistic symbols (syntax) and…
The Unseen World of Linguistic Annotation: The Human Hands Behind AI Language Models
** Before an AI can understand language, a human has to teach it. This work is done by linguistic annotators, the unsung heroes who manually tag text with grammatical and…
The Billion-Word Crystal Ball: How Corpus Linguistics Predicts the Future of Language
Ever wonder how new words like 'rizz' make it into the dictionary or why grammar rules seem to change over time? The answer lies in corpus linguistics, a fascinating field…
The Ghost in the Machine: How Linguists Teach Computers to Understand Ambiguity
Ever wonder how your phone knows you mean the band Queen, not a monarch? This post explores the linguistic challenge of ambiguity and the clever statistical methods, like n-grams and…
The Impact of Technology on Language Learning: From Duolingo to AI Tutors
In the ever-evolving landscape of technology, nothing remains untouched, and language learning is no exception. The shift from traditional in-person language learning to technologically assisted...
Harnessing AI Technologies for Personalized Language Learning
In an era where communication has become global and instantaneous, learning languages has never been more relevant. Traditional methods of language acquisition, though still effective,...