--- title: "MIT Invents AI to Decipher Ancient Languages" description: "A team of researchers at MIT have created an AI that is capable of automatically deciphering long lost languages." date: "2020-10-21" modified: "2020-10-21" authors: - name: "Victor Tangermann" job_title: "Senior Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/mit-invents-ai-decipher-ancient-languages" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" tags: - "ai" - "artificial intelligence" - "mit" - "the digest" --- # MIT Invents AI to Decipher Ancient Languages ![A team of researchers at MIT have created an AI that is capable of automatically deciphering long lost languages.]() *\Image: Rama via Wikimedia Commons\* ## Lost Languages A team of researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have created an AI that's capable of automatically deciphering long lost languages, even without any other advanced knowledge of how it relates to other languages. The goal is to uncover relationships between "lost" languages for which historians have found written records, but which nobody has actually spoken in a long time. ## AI Cypher The researchers taught a "decipherment algorithm" various linguistic constraints that occur as languages evolve in predictable ways. It then figured out patterns of language using these constraints. The algorithm can, as a result, categorize words in an ancient language and link them to the equivalents in other related languages. In other words, while it's not quite capable of acting like a Google Translate to decipher ancient texts into English, it can identify the roots of ancient tongues. ## Linguistic Mysteries For instance, the algorithm was able to accurately identify the language family of Iberian, an ancient language spoken by indigenous western European people from roughly the 7th to the first century BC. According to the AI, Iberian was not in fact related to Basque, as [recent research corroborates](). The team is hoping to eventually use their AI to decipher long lost languages using only a few thousand words. **READ MORE:** [Translating lost languages using machine learning]() \[MIT News\] **More on AI:** *[Facebook Algorithm Flags Onions as “Overtly Sexualized”]()* ## Author I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()