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Simon Kirby

@simonkirby.bsky.social

Prof Language Evolution FBA FRSE MAE. Head of Dept, Linguistics & English Language, Uni Edinburgh. With my students & collaborators I do science & art. he/him. simonkirby.net

129 Posts1639 Follower484 Folgt
Simon Kirby@simonkirby.bsky.social · last wk.

We uncovered spontaneous evolution of new languages in populations of AI agents. This creates extraordinary scientific opportunities but also safety risks. New blog post with about how we created a platform for studying this safely. www.schmidtsciences.org/glossogen/

AI Agents Evolve Their Own Languages

Schmidt Sciences’ new AI Agents Evolving Communication and Coordination pilot program works toward advancing foundational research on multi-agent communication and coordination, and building an open-s...

schmidtsciences.org

Aislinn Keogh@mandolinguist.bsky.social · 11mo ago

⚠️ New paper! Why do words sound so similar? In an agent-based model + communication game, we show that production/comprehension pressures trade off to shape lexicon structure. In @cognitionjournal.bsky.social w/ @simonkirby.bsky.social & Jenny Culbertson. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The lexicon adapts to competing communicative pressures: Explaining patterns of word similarity

Cross-linguistically, lexicons tend to be more phonetically clustered than required by the phonotactics of the language; that is, words within a langu…

sciencedirect.com

Maisy Hallam@maisyhallam.bsky.social · 12mo ago

New paper in @openmindjournal.bsky.social with @simonkirby.bsky.social, @kennysmithed.bsky.social and Fiona Jordan! Kinship terms overwhelmingly exhibit predictive structure - terms in one part of the system help us predict other terms - a pattern which emerges because it helps us generalise better.

Predictive Structure Emerges During the Generalisation of Kin Terms to New Referents

Abstract. Despite cross-linguistic diversity in how kin relations map to terminology, there are constraints on which kin may be categorised together. But what are the constraints on kin term variation...

direct.mit.edu

Simon Kirby@simonkirby.bsky.social · last yr.

Earlier this month, @nerdpro.bsky.social and I collaborated on an Atmosphere screening of my favourite film, Arrival. It was a lot of fun projecting animated Heptapod writing and quotations from Chiang’s original. We also wrote an essay you might like: www.mediascot.org/atmosphere/a...

Atmosphere | The Circle of Language and Cognition | New Media Scotland

Human What the alien language from Arrival reveals about being human What is the connection between human language and how the human mind works? Understanding the precise relationship between language...

mediascot.org

Margaret Mitchell@mmitchell.bsky.social · last yr.

Many thanks to @wired.com & @thiccreese.bsky.social for covering our work on stereotype bias!! The new dataset is SHADES, now available here: huggingface.co/datasets/LanguageShades/BiasShades The first of its kind for analyzing GenAI stereotyping across many languages+cultures. Published at NAACL.🤗

LanguageShades/BiasShades · Datasets at Hugging Face

We’re on a journey to advance and democratize artificial intelligence through open source and open science.

huggingface.co

Reece@thiccreese.bsky.social · last yr.

It’s not just biased—generative AI is importing old stereotypes into new languages and cultures. My latest for @wired.com: www.wired.com/story/ai-bia...

WIRED article screenshot: Is generative Al introducing new stereotypes to different languages and cultures? That is part of what we're finding. The idea of blondes being stupid is not something that's found all over the world, but is found in a lot of the languages that we looked at. When you have all of the data in one shared latent space, then semantic concepts can get transferred across languages. You're risking propagating harmful stereotypes that other people hadn't even thought of.
Peter Kirn@pkirn.bsky.social · last yr.

"Funk was a genre of sonic color, a genre that crossed oceans, a genre rooted in radical joy and inclusivity. We Want The Funk! makes clear that Black art is not just expression — it’s liberation." -Black Enterprise review. The full documentary is online:

Funk music history and Black liberation in a full-length documentary, online - CDM Create Digital Music

Hip hop, new wave, techno, and house are inseparable from funk history - and any discussion of funk in the 1970s demands a conversation about Black liberation. Emmy winner and MacArthur Fellow Stanley...

cdm.link

Alex Andreou@sturdyalex.bsky.social · last yr.

This is simply extraordinary. The Trump administration's argument is, essentially: if you receive some massively aggressive legal missive from the White House, don't respond in a timely way. Instead, chill out for a bit, in case we take it all back.

Joseph Allen @j_g_allen --> WH sends Harvard letter making outrageous (and illegal) demands --> WH now says it was sent by accident (oops!) --> WH blames Harvard (?) for reacting to the letter they sent --> Harvard: The letter “was signed by three federal officials, placed on official letterhead, was sent from the email inbox of a senior federal official and was sent on April 11 as promised,” Harvard said in a statement on Friday. “Recipients of such correspondence from the U.S. government — even when it contains sweeping demands that are astonishing in their overreach — do not question its authenticity or seriousness.” Harvard's statement continued: 2:52 AM · Apr 19, 2025 · 547.7K Views
David Adger@davidadger.bsky.social · last yr.

Given the state of the US, there's an opportunity for UK HE to stick its nostrils above the waves for a bit and keep paddling, but the govt's terror about Reform in the red wall will, it seems, block that and leave one of the UK's international export successes to drown. Totally irrational.

Jonn Elledge@jonnelledge.bsky.social · last yr.

Sooner or later, one of three things is going to happen. Universities can find money at home, or they can find it abroad. But if they don’t find it, some are going under. In defence of international students.

Simon Kirby@simonkirby.bsky.social · last yr.

I am genuinely baffled by mainstream political antipathy towards international students (which is not shared by the voting public, who are presumably delighted that they subsidise their kids’ education). The only “problem” solved by dissuading them from coming is the existence of universities at all

Jonn Elledge@jonnelledge.bsky.social · last yr.

Sooner or later, one of three things is going to happen. Universities can find money at home, or they can find it abroad. But if they don’t find it, some are going under. In defence of international students.

Simon Kirby@simonkirby.bsky.social · last yr.

The court *explicitly* does not attempt to define “woman”. No matter the harms this judgment will cause an endlessly beleaguered & oppressed minority (whilst doing nothing about the real source of gender-based violence), we should not allow lazy headline writers to claim it means more that it does.

Clipping from the Guardian article by Sam Fowles pointing out that the Supreme Court judgment explicitly states that their role is not to define the meaning of the word “woman”.
Simon Kirby@simonkirby.bsky.social · last yr.

Solidarity with my trans friends & colleagues on a difficult day for them. Depressing to hear that (once again) trans voices seem to have been left out of evidence gathering by the court. Let’s not allow this ruling to be overzealously interpreted by those trying to erase trans voices even further.

Scottish Trans@scottishtrans.bsky.social · last yr.

We'd urge people not to panic - there will be lots of commentary coming out quickly that is likely to deliberately overstate the impact that this decision is going to have on all trans people's lives. We'll say more as soon as we're able to. Please look out for yourselves and each other today 💗🏳️‍⚧️

School of PPLS at The University of Edinburgh@schoolofppls.bsky.social · last yr.

Lecturer in #Sociolinguistics @christianilbury.bsky.social leads the charge against linguistic prejudice in academia. At Speaking Out, researchers & students came confronted #accentbias - that unfairly links how we speak with how we're judged. Read More: edin.ac/3Ei04Zc

Tackling Accent Bias at an Elite University

Lecturer in Sociolinguistics, Dr Christian Ilbury, describes Speaking Out, an event designed to address class-based prejudice within the University.

edin.ac