iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Simon Kirby @simonkirby.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Thanks Adele! My own “fall off chair in surprise” moment was when they started creating their own conventions for meta-linguistic dialog to take an active role in their own learning of the languages. More details in the paper! arxiv.org/abs/2609.01491

arxiv.org

GlossoGen: Emergent Language in Complex Multi-Agent LLM Interactions

The growing rate at which LLM agents interact with one another raises key questions about language evolution in multi-LLM-agent settings, with implications for safety and monitorability as well as for...

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Simon Kirby @simonkirby.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

As with human languages, it’s hard to draw a dividing line that makes two communication systems distinct languages or not. But they are often completely inscrutable to an onlooker diverging at all levels of structure, including things like switching head-dependent order. More research needed!

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Simon Kirby @simonkirby.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

There’s more detail in the paper: arxiv.org/abs/2609.014... We don’t tell them to create languages that diverge from English, and importantly not all models do that spontaneously, but they are able to learn such a language if another, more capable, model has constructed one.

arxiv.org

GlossoGen: Emergent Language in Complex Multi-Agent LLM Interactions

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Simon Kirby @simonkirby.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

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/

schmidtsciences.org

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...

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Aislinn Keogh @mandolinguist.bsky.social · 10/11/2025

⚠️ 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...

sciencedirect.com

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…

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Simon Kirby @simonkirby.bsky.social · 08/07/2025

My first ever book cover! Made with maths, pencil, drawing robot, and photographic negative. Thank you @limorraviv.bsky.social and @cedricboeckx.bsky.social for asking me to do it, and for the lovely handwritten dedication inside 😊

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Cedric Boeckx @cedricboeckx.bsky.social · 27/05/2025

Delighted to announce the publication of a collaborative effort, co-led by @limorraviv.bsky.social @mpi-nl.bsky.social, showcasing the ways in which researchers have made language evolution an empirical issue: A handbook of experimental approaches to the fascinating problem of language evolution 🧪

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Centre for Language Evolution @uoe-cle.bsky.social · 07/07/2025

Language and Communication is on the GESDA science breakthrough radar for the first time! Language evolution, AI, empirical method and multilingualism are the four core topics. Make your views known on how likely breakthroughs are in these areas, and how soon they might happen: tinyurl.com/2r29yep6

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Centre for Language Evolution @uoe-cle.bsky.social · 30/06/2025

Join us at the National Museum of Scotland July 19th to learn about animal communication and what makes human communication different from the rest of our primate family! 🐵 www.nms.ac.uk/events/monke...

A blonde woman in a grey t-shirt and a brunette woman in a red vest sit at a table. Both are smiling. On the table there is a plush monkey toy, a blue tray, and a green vine.

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Aislinn Keogh @mandolinguist.bsky.social · 07/07/2025

Introducing Dr Keogh! 🎓 Very emotional to have finally closed the chapter on my time at the @uoe-cle.bsky.social 😭 but glad to have passed this milestone in the company of my wonderful supervisors @simonkirby.bsky.social and Jenny Culbertson, and my PhD twin Elizabeth Pankratz. We made it! #PhDone

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Simon Kirby @simonkirby.bsky.social · 25/04/2025

So lucky and proud to have someone as dedicated to his students as Christian as a colleague.

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Simon Kirby @simonkirby.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

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...

mediascot.org

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...

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Margaret Mitchell @mmitchell.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

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.🤗

huggingface.co

LanguageShades/BiasShades · Datasets at Hugging Face

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

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 23/04/2025

If six months ago you'd told me that in autumn 2025 I'd have to go to Canada to get my annual COVID vaccine but I wouldn't do it because coming back through immigrations was too risky for someone who had criticized the government, I would have looked at you like you were having a stroke.

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Peter Kirn @pkirn.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

"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:

cdm.link

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...

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Nature @nature.com · 22/04/2025

All new research grants have been frozen at the US National Science Foundation — an action apparently ordered by the Department of Government Efficiency go.nature.com/42pvdDe

go.nature.com

Exclusive: Trump team freezes new NSF awards — and could soon axe hundreds of grants

The National Science Foundation is the latest US agency to be disrupted by Elon Musk’s DOGE.

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Matt Steinglass @mattsteinglass.bsky.social · 21/04/2025

IPSOS finds collapse in European pro-US sentiment in last 6 months. In October 2024 50% of Dutch thought the US would have a positive influence on the world; in April 2024 that has plummeted to 20%. Similar drops in France, Italy, Germany et al. www.ipsos.com/en/americas-...

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m @mirative.moe · 20/04/2025

These are now woke DEI books

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Linguischick @cocchino.bsky.social · 19/04/2025

New NSF "Broad Impact" guidelines, "Research projects with more narrow impact limited to subgroups of people based on protected class or characteristics do not effectuate NSF priorities" #Linguistics #DeafCommunities #IndigenousCommunities #RacializedCommunities #MinoritizedCommunities

media.tenor.com

a bald man with a shaved head is wearing a gray suit

Alt: Dr. EVIL (a bald man with a shaved head, wearing a gray suit) says "right"

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Alex Andreou @sturdyalex.bsky.social · 19/04/2025

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
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David Adger @davidadger.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

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.

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Simon Kirby @simonkirby.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

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

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Simon Kirby @simonkirby.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

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”.

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Chris Lintott @chrislintott.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

An astonishing headline reporting on new observations from a team led to Nikku Madhusudhan claims they’ve found ‘hints of life’ on a planet orbiting a dwarf star some 124 light years away. What’s going on? (1/n) www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... 🔭 🧪

bbc.co.uk

Promising hints of life found on distant planet K2-18b

Scientists find new but tentative evidence that a faraway world orbiting another star may be home to life.

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Simon Kirby @simonkirby.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

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.

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Jo Wolff @jowolff.bsky.social · 13/04/2025

"I do not mind if you think slowly, but I do mind when you publish more quickly than you think." Wolfgang Pauli

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Joshua J. Friedman @joshuajfriedman.com · 10/04/2025

Imagine trying to deport someone for their "expected beliefs"

(SBU) Under INA section 237(a)(4)(C)(i), an alien is deportable from the United States if the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe that the alien's presence or activities in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States. Under INA section 237(a)(4)(C)(ii), for cases in which the basis for this determination is the alien's past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or associations that are otherwise lawful, the Secretary of State must personally determine that the alien's presence or activities would compromise a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest.

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School of PPLS at The University of Edinburgh @schoolofppls.bsky.social · 10/04/2025

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

edin.ac

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.

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Monica Marks @monicamarks.bsky.social · 10/04/2025

Everyone should listen to this podcast featuring British Guardian reporter @adamgabbatt.bsky.social from beginning to end. It’s very difficult to feel fully safe about totally “white” non-Muslim Western friends in the US now, let alone non-white & Muslim students. open.spotify.com/episode/1EVS...

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 09/04/2025

How it started / How it's going

Columbia University caves to demands to restore $400m from Trump administration

Measures include empowering security officers to arrest people, and reassigning control of Middle East department

Exclusive: NIH freezes all research grants to Columbia University
Amid negotiations with Trump, the university could risk losing nearly $700 million

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Björn Lindström @bjornlindstrom.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

Postdoc opening in beautiful Stockholm 🇸🇪! Join us at Karolinska Institutet to explore how interdependent traits shape social learning and cultural evolution. 🧠 Behavioral + computational work 🤝 Work w/ labs in Amsterdam @lucasmolleman.bsky.social & Leuven Details: shorturl.at/Wzy9o

shorturl.at

Postdoctoral Researcher in psychology/cognitive science with focus on social learning and cultural evolution

Do you want to contribute to top quality medical research? The Mechanisms of Social Behavior lab at the Karolinska Institutet (PI: Björn Lindström) in Stockholm, Sweden is seeking a highly qualified

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Simon Kirby @simonkirby.bsky.social · 06/04/2025

Super cool work! The method used here is very exciting and suggests that some form of compositionality could potentially be widespread outside of language! How similar (in form and origins) this type of compositionality is to what we find in language remains I think an open question.

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Mélissa Berthet @berthetmelissa.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

🚨New in @science.org🚨 With Simon Townsend (@nccrlanguage.bsky.social) and Martin Surbeck, we have investigated whether wild bonobos can combine calls in complex combinations, similar to how humans combine words into sentences 🧪 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... #ScienceResearch #AnimalCommunication

science.org

Extensive compositionality in the vocal system of bonobos

Compositionality, the capacity to combine meaningful elements into larger meaningful structures, is a hallmark of human language. Compositionality can be trivial (the combination’s meaning is the sum ...

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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 05/04/2025

"we should shed the idea that AI is a technological artifact with political features & recognize it as a political artifact through & through. AI is an ideological project to shift authority & autonomy away from individuals, towards centralized structures of power" i finally read this & it's 🔥🔥🔥

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School of PPLS at The University of Edinburgh @schoolofppls.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

This Sunday join @simonkirby.bsky.social for a special screening of Arrival (2016) a sublime experience that transcends traditional science-fiction cinema. The event, organised by Edinburgh Science Festival and Grassmarket Community Project begins at 6.30pm. Tickets available here: edin.ac/4ch0X0J

edinburghscience.co.uk

Atmosphere | Arrival - Edinburgh Science

Experience cinematic masterpiece Arrival like never before in this unique expanded screening.

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RSPB @rspb.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

WORLD-FIRST: Ground-breaking research published today in the Ornithologist Journal has, for the first time, translated common UK bird vocalisations into equivalent phrases in the human language. The results tell us a lot! Extracts below... 🧵

The front cover of a scientific journal titled Ornithologist, dated 1 April 2025. The main headline reads: “BIRDS: DECODED - Groundbreaking New Science.” Below that, a subheading says: “What are the UK’s birds really saying? Pioneering new research provides the answers.”

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Szabolcs Panyi @szabolcspanyi.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

💥🇭🇺 Police have given up guarding Budapest’s Liberty Bridge as anti-government protesters shut down traffic on four major bridges, rallying against Viktor Orbán’s new law curbing freedom of assembly and banning the Pride march. They vow to escalate with a 24-hour shutdown next week.

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CJ @virmalised.us · 01/04/2025

remember how everyone told you anti-trans legislation and anti-trans discrimination would hurt cis folks too? www.comicsands.com/woman-fired-...

comicsands.com

Tall Cisgender Woman Fired From Walmart After Customer Accused Her Of Being Trans

She was just minding her own business…

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Michael Wong @miquai.bsky.social · 29/03/2025

I received a heartbreaking email today: A paper in a special issue I’m editing is being retracted because one of its authors is afraid of losing their job and their legal status in the U.S. if they publish a scientific study on evolution. Yes, on evolution, nature's engine of diversity.

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Helen Czerski @helenczerski.bsky.social · 29/03/2025

A chilling thought: "So if the aloof trustees of Harvard, Princeton, Yale et al think that their august institutions lie beyond his reach, perhaps they should understand that Trump looks on them much as Henry VIII looked on the rich monasteries of his heyday." www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

theguardian.com

When the physicists need burner phones, that’s when you know America’s changed | John Naughton

US academics, fearing persecution by their own government, are becoming ideological refugees. Europe, and Britain, must offer them sanctuary

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Roland Smith @rolandmcs.bsky.social · 29/03/2025

Worth adding that the American Dream exists, not in America, but in... Denmark.

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Air-Moving Device @airmovingdevice.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

DOGE/Musk preferentially cancelled grants and contracts to recipients in counties that voted for Harris in 2024. Among cancellations with election data available, 92.9% and 86.1% cancelled grants and contracts went to Harris counties, representing 96.6% and 92.4% of total dollar amounts.

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Prof Christina Pagel @chrischirp.bsky.social · 29/03/2025

I only wrote this substack *yesterday* about the dangers of being a foreign student or academic in the US, but I am already having to update it as more disappearances and visa revocations happen. christinapagel.substack.com/p/trumps-att...

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Nathan Kalman-Lamb @nkalamb.bsky.social · 29/03/2025

Hundreds of international students have just received an email telling them their visas have been revoked. The ‘justification’ is campus activism or social media posts. timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/hun...

The biggest reason government officials aren't giving any specifics about the criteria by which these arrests and deportations are selected, is that the criteria is "pro-Israel think-tanks and advocacy organizations created lists of troublesome individuals and gave them to us."

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Prof Christina Pagel @chrischirp.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

Colleagues are cancelling their US work trips. I worry that international colleagues in the US are at risk if they collaborate with us on certain topics. I've written a new post about the increasing danger of being a foreign scientist in the US. christinapagel.substack.com/p/trumps-att...

christinapagel.substack.com

Trump's attacks on universities get ever darker, with the shadows reaching our shores

The US has become a hostile and authoritarian state to foreign scientists and is choosing ideology over science.

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