Best of the rest Research roundup: 7 stories we almost missed Also: drumming chimpanzees, picking styles of two jazz greats, and an ancient underground city's soundscape Jennifer Ouellette – May 31, 2025 5:37 pm | 4 Time lapse photos show a new ping-pong-playing robot performing a top spin. Credit: David Nguyen, Kendrick Cancio and Sangbae Kim Time lapse photos show a new ping-pong-playing robot performing a top spin. Credit: David Nguyen, Kendrick Cancio and Sangbae Kim Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more It's a regrettable reality that there is never time to cover all the interesting scientific stories we come across each month. In the past, we've featured year-end roundups of cool science stories we (almost) missed. This year, we're experimenting with a monthly collection. May's list includes a nifty experiment to make a predicted effect of special relativity visible; a ping-pong playing robot that can return hits with 88 percent accuracy; and the discovery of the rare genetic mutation that makes orange cats orange, among other highlights. Special relativity made visible Credit: TU Wien Perhaps the most well-known feature of Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity is time dilation and length contraction. In 1959, two physicists predicted another feature of relativistic motion: an object moving near the speed of light should also appear to be rotated. It's not been possible to demonstrate this experimentally, however—until now. Physicists at the Vienna University of Technology figured out how to reproduce this rotational effect in the lab using laser pulses and precision cameras, according to a paper published in the journal Communications Physics. They found their inspiration in art, specifically an earlier collaboration with an artist named Enar de Dios Rodriguez, who collaborated with VUT and the University of Vienna on a project involving ultra-fast photography and slow light. For this latest research, they used objects shaped like a cube and a sphere and moved them around the lab while zapping them with ultrashort laser pulses, recording the flashes with a high-speed camera. Getting the timing just right effectively yields similar results to a light speed of 2 m/s. After photographing the objects many times using this method, the team then combined the still images into a single image. The results: the cube looked twisted and the sphere's North Pole was in a different location—a demonstration of the rotational effect predicted back in 1959. DOI: Communications Physics, 2025. 10.1038/s42005-025-02003-6  (About DOIs). Drumming chimpanzees A chimpanzee feeling the rhythm. Credit: Current Biology/Eleuteri et al., 2025. Chimpanzees are known to "drum" on the roots of trees as a means of communication, often combining that action with what are known as "pant-hoot" vocalizations (see above video). Scientists have found that the chimps' drumming exhibits key elements of musical rhythm much like humans, according to  a paper published in the journal Current Biology—specifically non-random timing and isochrony. And chimps from different geographical regions have different drumming rhythms. Back in 2022, the same team observed that individual chimps had unique styles of "buttress drumming," which served as a kind of communication, letting others in the same group know their identity, location, and activity. This time around they wanted to know if this was also true of chimps living in different groups and whether their drumming was rhythmic in nature. So they collected video footage of the drumming behavior among 11 chimpanzee communities across six populations in East Africa (Uganda) and West Africa (Ivory Coast), amounting to 371 drumming bouts. Their analysis of the drum patterns confirmed their hypothesis. The western chimps drummed in regularly spaced hits, used faster tempos, and started drumming earlier during their pant-hoot vocalizations. Eastern chimps would alternate between shorter and longer spaced hits. Since this kind of rhythmic percussion is one of the earliest evolved forms of human musical expression and is ubiquitous across cultures, findings such as this could shed light on how our love of rhythm evolved. DOI: Current Biology, 2025. 10.1016/j.cub.2025.04.019  (About DOIs). Distinctive styles of two jazz greats Jazz lovers likely need no introduction to Joe Pass and Wes Montgomery, 20th century guitarists who influenced generations of jazz musicians with their innovative techniques. Montgomery, for instance, didn't use a pick, preferring to pluck the strings with his thumb—a method he developed because he practiced at night after working all day as a machinist and didn't want to wake his children or neighbors. Pass developed his own range of picking techniques, including fingerpicking, hybrid picking, and "flat picking." Chirag Gokani and Preston Wilson, both with Applied Research Laboratories and the University of Texas, Austin, greatly admired both Pass and Montgomery and decided to explore the underlying the acoustics of their distinctive playing, modeling the interactions of the thumb, fingers, and pick with a guitar string. They described their research during a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in New Orleans, LA. Among their findings: Montgomery achieved his warm tone by playing closer to the bridge and mostly plucking at the string. Pass's rich tone arose from a combination of using a pick and playing closer to the guitar neck. There were also differences in how much a thumb, finger, and pick slip off the string:  use of the thumb (Montgomery) produced more of a "pluck" compared to the pick (Pass), which produced more of a "strike." Gokani and Wilson think their model could be used to synthesize digital guitars with a more realistic sound, as well as helping guitarists better emulate Pass and Montgomery. Sounds of an ancient underground city Credit: Sezin Nas Turkey is home to the underground city Derinkuyu, originally carved out inside soft volcanic rock around the 8th century BCE. It was later expanded to include four main ventilation channels (and some 50,000 smaller shafts) serving seven levels, which could be closed off from the inside with a large rolling stone. The city could hold up to 20,000 people and it  was connected to another underground city, Kaymakli, via tunnels. Derinkuyu helped protect Arab Muslims during the Arab-Byzantine wars, served as a refuge from the Ottomans in the 14th century, and as a haven for Armenians escaping persecution in the early 20th century, among other functions. The tunnels were rediscovered in the 1960s and about half of the city has been open to visitors since 2016. The site is naturally of great archaeological interest, but there has been little to no research on the acoustics of the site, particularly the ventilation channels—one of Derinkuyu's most unique features, according to Sezin Nas, an architectural acoustician at Istanbul Galata University in Turkey.  She gave a talk at a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in New Orleans, LA, about her work on the site's acoustic environment. Nas analyzed a church, a living area, and a kitchen, measuring sound sources and reverberation patterns, among other factors, to create a 3D virtual soundscape. The hope is that a better understanding of this aspect of Derinkuyu could improve the design of future underground urban spaces—as well as one day using her virtual soundscape to enable visitors to experience the sounds of the city themselves. MIT's latest ping-pong robot Robots playing ping-pong have been a thing since the 1980s, of particular interest to scientists because it requires the robot to combine the slow, precise ability to grasp and pick up objects with dynamic, adaptable locomotion. Such robots need high-speed machine vision, fast motors and actuators, precise control, and the ability to make accurate predictions in real time, not to mention being able to develop a game strategy. More recent designs use AI techniques to allow the robots to "learn" from prior data to improve their performance. MIT researchers have built their own version of a ping-pong playing robot, incorporating a lightweight design and the ability to precisely return shots. They built on prior work developing the Humanoid, a small bipedal two-armed robot—specifically, modifying the Humanoid's arm by adding an extra degree of freedom to the wrist so the robot could control a ping-pong paddle. They tested their robot by mounting it on a ping-pong table and lobbing 150 balls at it from the other side of the table, capturing the action with high-speed cameras. The new bot can execute three different swing types (loop, drive, and chip) and during the trial runs it returned the ball with impressive accuracy across all three types: 88.4 percent, 89.2 percent, and 87.5 percent, respectively. Subsequent tweaks to theirrystem brought the robot's strike speed up to 19 meters per second (about 42 MPH), close to the 12 to 25 meters per second of advanced human players. The addition of control algorithms gave the robot the ability to aim. The robot still has limited mobility and reach because it has to be fixed to the ping-pong table but the MIT researchers plan to rig it to a gantry or wheeled platform in the future to address that shortcoming. Why orange cats are orange Credit: Astropulse/CC BY-SA 3.0 Cat lovers know orange cats are special for more than their unique coloring, but that's the quality that has intrigued scientists for almost a century. Sure, lots of animals have orange, ginger, or yellow hues, like tigers, orangutans, and golden retrievers. But in domestic cats that color is specifically linked to sex. Almost all orange cats are male. Scientists have now identified the genetic mutation responsible and it appears to be unique to cats, according to a paper published in the journal Current Biology. Prior work had narrowed down the region on the X chromosome most likely to contain the relevant mutation. The scientists knew that females usually have just one copy of the mutation and in that case have tortoiseshell (partially orange) coloring, although in rare cases, a female cat will be orange if both X chromosomes have the mutation. Over the last five to ten years, there has been an explosion in genome resources (including complete sequenced genomes) for cats which greatly aided the team's research, along with taking additional DNA samples from cats at spay and neuter clinics. From an initial pool of 51 candidate variants, the scientists narrowed it down to three genes, only one of which was likely to play any role in gene regulation: Arhgap36. It wasn't known to play any role in pigment cells in humans, mice, or non-orange cats. But orange cats are special; their mutation (sex-linked orange) turns on Arhgap36 expression in pigment cells (and only pigment cells), thereby interfering with the molecular pathway that controls coat color in other orange-shaded mammals. The scientists suggest that this is an example of how genes can acquire new functions, thereby enabling species to better adapt and evolve. DOI: Current Biology, 2025. 10.1016/j.cub.2025.03.075  (About DOIs). Not a Roman "massacre" after all Credit: Martin Smith In 1936, archaeologists excavating the Iron Age hill fort Maiden Castle in the UK unearthed dozens of human skeletons, all showing signs of lethal injuries to the head and upper body—likely inflicted with weaponry. At the time, this was interpreted as evidence of a pitched battle between the Britons of the local Durotriges tribe and invading Romans. The Romans slaughtered the native inhabitants, thereby bringing a sudden violent end to the Iron Age. At least that's the popular narrative that has prevailed ever since in countless popular articles, books, and documentaries. But a paper published in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology calls that narrative into question. Archaeologists at Bournemouth University have re-analyzed those burials, incorporating radiocarbon dating into their efforts. They concluded that those individuals didn't die in a single brutal battle. Rather, it was Britons killing other Britons over multiple generations between the first century BCE and the first century CE—most likely in periodic localized outbursts of violence in the lead-up to the Roman conquest of Britain. It's possible there are still many human remains waiting to be discovered at the site, which could shed further light on what happened at Maiden Castle. DOI: Oxford Journal of Archaeology, 2025. 10.1111/ojoa.12324  (About DOIs). Jennifer Ouellette Senior Writer Jennifer Ouellette Senior Writer Jennifer is a senior writer at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban. 4 Comments

The US is less than 250 years old, but some of its most important archaeological sites are older than the Viking seafarers, the Roman Empire, and the pyramids.Many help tell the story of how the first humans came to North America. It's still a mystery exactly how and when people arrived, though it's widely believed they crossed the Bering Strait at least 15,000 years ago."As we get further back in time, as we get populations that are smaller and smaller, finding these places and interpreting them becomes increasingly difficult," archaeologist Kenneth Feder told Business Insider. He's the author of "Ancient America: Fifty Archaeological Sites to See for Yourself."Some sites, like White Sands and Cooper's Ferry, have skeptics about the accuracy of their age. Still, they contribute to our understanding of some of the earliest Americans.Others are more recent and highlight the different cultures that were spreading around the country, with complex buildings and illuminating pictographs.Many of these places are open to the public, so you can see the US' ancient history for yourself. White Sands National Park, New Mexico Footprints at White Sands. National Park Service Prehistoric camels, mammoths, and giant sloths once roamed what's now New Mexico, when it was greener and damper.As the climate warmed around 11,000 years ago, the water of Lake Otero receded, revealing footprints of humans who lived among these extinct animals. Some even seemed to be following a sloth, offering a rare glimpse into ancient hunters' behavior.Recent research puts some of these fossilized footprints at between 21,000 and 23,000 years old. If the dates are accurate, the prints would predate other archaeological sites in the US, raising intriguing questions about who these people were and how they arrived in the Southwestern state."Where are they coming from?" Feder said. "They're not parachute dropping in New Mexico. They must have come from somewhere else, which means there are even older sites." Archaeologists simply haven't found them yet.While visitors can soak in the sight of the eponymous white sands, the footprints are currently off-limits. Meadowcroft Rockshelter, Pennsylvania The archeological dig at the Meadowcroft National Historic Site in 2013. AP Photo/Keith Srakocic In the 1970s, archaeologist James M. Adovasio sparked a controversy when he and his colleagues suggested stone tools and other artifacts found in southwestern Pennsylvania belonged to humans who had lived in the area 16,000 years ago.For decades, scientists had been finding evidence of human habitation that all seemed to be around 12,000 to 13,000 years old, belonging to the Clovis culture. They were long believed to have been the first to cross the Bering land bridge. Humans who arrived in North America before this group are often referred to as pre-Clovis.At the time, skeptics said that the radiocarbon dating evidence was flawed, AP News reported in 2016. In the years since, more sites that appear older than 13,000 years have been found across the US.Feder said Adovasio meticulously excavated the site, but there's still no clear consensus about the age of the oldest artifacts. Still, he said, "that site is absolutely a major, important, significant site." It helped archaeologists realize humans started arriving on the continent before the Clovis people.The dig itself is on display at the Heinz History Center, allowing visitors to see an excavation in person. Cooper's Ferry, Idaho Excavators at Cooper's Ferry in 2013. Loren Davis/Oregon State University One site that's added intriguing evidence to the pre-Clovis theory is located in western Idaho. Humans living there left stone tools and charred bones in a hearth between 14,000 and 16,000 years ago, according to radiocarbon dating. Other researchers put the dates closer to 11,500 years ago.These stemmed tools are different from the Clovis fluted projectiles, researchers wrote in a 2019 Science Advances paper.Some scientists think humans may have been traveling along the West Coast at this time, when huge ice sheets covered Alaska and Canada. "People using boats, using canoes could hop along that coast and end up in North America long before those glacial ice bodies decoupled," Feder said.Cooper's Ferry is located on traditional Nez Perce land, which the Bureau of Land Management holds in public ownership. Page-Ladson, Florida Divers search in the sediment at the Page-Ladson site. Texas A&M University via Getty Images In the early 1980s, former Navy SEAL Buddy Page alerted paleontologists and archaeologists to a sinkhole nicknamed "Booger Hole" in the Aucilla River. There, the researchers found mammoth and mastodon bones and stone tools.They also discovered a mastodon tusk with what appeared to be cut marks believed to be made by a tool. Other scientists have returned to the site more recently, bringing up more bones and tools. They used radiocarbon dating, which established the site as pre-Clovis."The stone tools and faunal remains at the site show that at 14,550 years ago, people knew how to find game, fresh water and material for making tools," Michael Waters, one of the researchers, said in a statement in 2016. "These people were well-adapted to this environment."Since the site is both underwater and on private property, it's not open to visitors. Paisley Caves, Oregon One of the Paisley Caves near Paisley, Oregon. AP Photo/Jeff Barnard Scientists study coprolites, or fossilized poop, to learn about the diets of long-dead animals. Mineralized waste can also reveal much more. In 2020, archaeologist Dennis Jenkins published a paper on coprolites from an Oregon cave that were over 14,000 years old.Radiocarbon dating gave the trace fossils' age, and genetic tests suggested they belonged to humans. Further analysis of coprolites added additional evidence that a group had been on the West Coast 1,000 years before the Clovis people arrived.Located in southcentral Oregon, the caves appear to be a piece of the puzzle indicating how humans spread throughout the continent thousands of years ago.The federal Bureau of Land Management owns the land where the caves are found, and they are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Swan Point, Alaska Excavators working at the Swan Point site in June 2016. Charles Holmes/University of Alaska, Fairbanks Whenever people arrived in the Americas, they crossed from Siberia into Beringia, an area of land and sea between Russia and Canada and Alaska. Now it's covered in water, but there was once a land bridge connecting them.The site in Alaska with the oldest evidence of human habitation is Swan Point, in the state's eastern-central region. In addition to tools and hearths dating back 14,000 years, mammoth bones have been found there.Researchers think this area was a kind of seasonal hunting camp. As mammoths returned during certain times of the years, humans would track them and kill them, providing plentiful food for the hunter-gatherers.While Alaska may have a wealth of archaeological evidence of early Americans, it's also a difficult place to excavate. "Your digging season is very narrow, and it's expensive," Feder said. Some require a helicopter to reach, for example. Blackwater Draw, New Mexico A palaeontologist excavating a mammoth in Portales, New Mexico, circa 1960. Dick Kent/FPG/Archive Photos/Getty Images In 1929, 19-year-old James Ridgley Whiteman found mammoth bones along with fluted projectile points near Clovis, New Mexico. The Clovis people who made these tools were named for this site.Researchers studying the site began to realize the artifacts found at the site belonged to different cultures. Clovis points are typically larger than Folsom flutes, which were first found at another archaeological site in New Mexico.For decades after Whiteman's discovery, experts thought the Clovis people were the first to cross the Bering land bridge from Asia around 13,000 years ago. Estimates for humans' arrival is now thought to be at least 15,000 years ago.Eastern New Mexico University's Blackwater Draw Museum grants access to the archaeological site between April and October. Upper Sun River, Alaska Excavations at the Upward Sun River, Alaska. Ben Potter/University of Alaska, Fairbanks One reason the dates of human occupation in North America is so contentious is that very few ancient remains have been found. Among the oldest is a child from Upward Sun River, or Xaasaa Na', in Central Alaska.Archaeologists found the bones of the child in 2013. Local indigenous groups refer to her as Xach'itee'aanenh t'eede gay, or Sunrise Girl-Child. Genetic testing revealed the 11,300-year-old infant belonged to a previously unknown Native American population, the Ancient Beringians.Based on the child's genetic information, researchers learned that she was related to modern Native Americans but not directly. Their common ancestors started becoming genetically isolated 25,000 years ago before dividing into two groups after a few thousand years: the Ancient Berignians and the ancestors of modern Native Americans.According to this research, it's possible humans reached Alaska roughly 20,000 years ago. Poverty Point National Monument, Louisiana Poverty Point in Louisiana. National Park Service Stretching over 80 feet long and 5 feet tall, the rows of curved mounds of Poverty Point are a marvel when viewed from above. Over 3,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers constructed them out of tons of soil. Scientists aren't sure exactly why people built them, whether they were ceremonial or a display of status.The artifacts various groups left behind indicate the site was used off and on for hundreds of years and was a meeting point for trading. People brought tools and rocks from as far as 800 miles away. Remains of deer, fish, frogs, alligators, nuts, grapes, and other food have given archaeologists insights into their diets and daily lives.You can see the World Heritage Site for yourself year-round. Horseshoe Canyon, Utah The Great Gallery in Horseshoe Canyon. Neal Herbert/National Park Service Though remote, the multicolored walls of Horseshoe Canyon have long attracted visitors. Some of its artifacts date back to between 9,000 and 7,000 BCE, but its pictographs are more recent. Some tests date certain sections to around 2,000 to 900 years ago.The four galleries contain life-sized images of anthropomorphic figures and animals in what's known as the Barrier Canyon style. Much of this art is found in Utah, produced by the Desert Archaic culture.The pictographs may have spiritual and practical significance but also help capture a time when groups were meeting and mixing, according to the Natural History Museum of Utah.It's a difficult trek to get to the pictographs (and the NPS warns it can be dangerously hot in summer) but are amazing to view in person, Feder said. "These are creative geniuses," he said of the artists. Canyon de Chelly, Arizona The Antelope House at Canyon de Chelly National Monument. Michael Denson/National Park Service Situated in the Navajo Nation, Canyon de Chelly has gorgeous desert views and thousands of years of human history. Centuries ago, Ancestral Pueblo and Hopi groups planted crops, created pictographs, and built cliff dwellings.Over 900 years ago, Puebloan people constructed the White House, named for the hue of its clay. Its upper floors sit on a sandstone cliff, with a sheer drop outside the windows.Navajo people, also known as Diné, still live in Canyon de Chelly. Diné journalist Alastair Lee Bitsóí recently wrote about visiting some of the sacred and taboo areas. They include Tsé Yaa Kin, where archaeologists found human remains.In the 1860s, the US government forced 8,000 Navajo to relocate to Fort Sumner in New Mexico. The deadly journey is known as the "Long Walk." Eventually, they were able to return, though their homes and crops were destroyed.A hike to the White House is the only one open to the public without a Navajo guide or NPS ranger. Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado Visitors line up at Mesa Verde National Park. Shutterstock/Don Mammoser In the early 1900s, two women formed the Colorado Cliff Dwelling Association, hoping to preserve the ruins in the state's southwestern region. A few years later, President Theodore Roosevelt signed a bill designating Mesa Verde as the first national park meant to "preserve the works of man."Mesa Verde National Park holds hundreds of dwellings, including the sprawling Cliff Palace. It has over 100 rooms and nearly two dozen kivas, or ceremonial spaces.Using dendrochronology, or tree-ring dating, archaeologists learned when Ancestral Pueblo people built some of these structures and that they migrated out of the area by the 1300s.Feder said it's his favorite archaeological site he's visited. "You don't want to leave because you can't believe it's real," he said.Tourists can view many of these dwellings from the road, but some are also accessible after a bit of a hike. Some require extra tickets and can get crowded, Feder said. Cahokia, Illinois A mound at Cahokia in Illinois. Matt Gush/Shutterstock Cahokia has been called one of North America's first cities. Not far from present-day St. Louis, an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 people lived in dense settlements roughly 1,000 years ago. Important buildings sat atop large mounds, which the Mississippians built by hand, The Guardian reported.At the time, it was thriving with hunters, farmers, and artisans. "It's an agricultural civilization," Feder said. "It's a place where raw materials from a thousand miles away are coming in." Researchers have also found mass graves, potentially from human sacrifices.The inhabitants built circles of posts, which one archaeologist later referred to as "woodhenges," as a kind of calendar. At the solstices, the sun would rise or set aligned with different mounds.After a few hundred years, Cahokia's population declined and disappeared by 1350. Its largest mound remains, and some aspects have been reconstructed.While Cahokia is typically open to the public, parts are currently closed for renovations. Montezuma Castle, Arizona Montezuma Castle, a cliff dwelling, in Arizona. MyLoupe/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Perched on a limestone cliff in Camp Verde, Arizona, this site is an apartment, not a castle, and is unrelated to the Aztec ruler Montezuma.The Sinagua people engineered the five-story, 20-room building around 1100. It curves to follow the natural line of the cliff, which would have been more difficult than simply making a straight building, Feder said."These people were architects," he said. "They had a sense of beauty."The inhabitants were also practical, figuring out irrigation systems and construction techniques, like thick walls and shady spots, to help them survive the hot, dry climate.Feder said the dwelling is fairly accessible, with a short walk along a trail to view it, though visitors can't go inside the building itself.

As AI reshapes language, even the human voice becomes a pattern to be predicted, not a meaning to be ... More understood.getty Language is the foundation of business, culture, and consciousness. But AI isn’t just using our words—it’s reshaping them. Quietly, subtly, it’s dismantling the architecture of thought by eroding what we used to think: nouns. We used to believe that naming something gave it power. Giving a thing a noun means tethering it to meaning, identity, and memory. But in the age of AI, nouns are dissolving—not banned, not erased—but rendered functionally obsolete. And with them, our grasp on reality is starting to fray. AI and the Architecture of Thought AI doesn’t see the world in things. It sees the world in patterns—actions, probabilities, and prompts. A chair is no longer an object; it’s “something to sit on.” A self is no longer an identity; it’s “a collection of behaviors and preferences.” Even brands, once nouns wrapped in mythology, are being reconstituted as verbs. You don’t have a brand. You do a brand. This linguistic shift isn’t neutral. It’s a collapse of conceptual anchors. In generative systems, nouns aren’t centers of gravity. They’re scaffolding for action. This reflects a broader trend in how generative AI is reshaping communication across every industry. Recent research supports this trend. A study titled Playing with Words: Comparing the Vocabulary and Lexical Richness of ChatGPT and Humans found that ChatGPT’s outputs exhibit significantly lower lexical diversity than human writing. In particular, nouns and specific, stylistic words are often underused, suggesting that generative systems prioritize predictable, commonly used language while deprioritizing less frequent terms. Further analysis of 14 million PubMed abstracts revealed a measurable shift in word frequency post-AI adoption. Words like “delves” and “showcasing” surged, while others faded—showing that large language models are already reshaping vocabulary patterns at scale. Sound familiar? It should. AI’s Philosophical Ancestors: Orwell, Huxley, and the Future They Warned Us About To understand their relevance, it helps to recall what George Orwell and Aldous Huxley are most famous for. Orwell authored 1984, a bleak vision of the future where an authoritarian regime weaponizes language to suppress independent thought and rewrite history. His concept of Newspeak—a restricted, simplified language designed to make dissent unthinkable—has become a cultural shorthand for manipulative control. On the other hand, Huxley wrote Brave New World, which envisioned a society not characterized by overt oppression, but rather by engineered pleasure, distraction, and passive conformity. In his world, people are conditioned into compliance not through violence but through comfort, entertainment, and chemical sedation. Both men anticipated futures in which language and meaning are compromised, but in radically different ways. Together, they map the two poles of how reality can be reconditioned: by force or indulgence. Few realize that George Orwell was once a student of Aldous Huxley. In the late 1910s, while Orwell (then Eric Blair) studied at Eton, Huxley taught him French. Their relationship was brief but prophetic. Decades later, each would author the defining visions of dystopia—1984 and Brave New World. After reading 1984, Huxley wrote to Orwell with a haunting message: Whether in actual fact the policy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indefinitely seems doubtful… The future will be controlled by inflicting pleasure, not pain. And that’s precisely where we are now. Orwell feared control through surveillance and terror. Huxley feared control through indulgence and distraction. Generative AI, cloaked in helpfulness, embodies both. It doesn’t censor. It seduces. It doesn’t need Newspeak to delete ideas. It replaces them with prediction. In 1984, language was weaponized by force. In our world, it’s being reshaped by suggestion. What we have is not Artificial Intelligence—it’s Artificial Inference: trained not to understand but to remix, not to reason but to simulate. And this simulation brings us to a more profound loss: intersubjectivity. AI and the Loss of Intersubjectivity Humans learn, grow, and build reality through intersubjectivity—the shared context that gives language its weight. It allows us to share meaning, to agree on what a word represents, and to build mutual understanding through shared experiences. Without it, words float. AI doesn’t participate in intersubjectivity. It doesn’t share meaning—it predicts output. And yet, when someone asks an AI a question, they often believe the answer reflects their framing. It doesn’t. It reflects the average of averages, the statistical ghost of comprehension. The illusion of understanding is precise, polite, and utterly hollow. This is how AI reconditions reality at scale—not by force, but by imitation. The result? A slow, silent attrition of originality. Nouns lose their edges. Ideas lose their anchors. Authorship bleeds into prompting. And truth becomes whatever the model says most often. AI and Accountability: A Case Study in Trust and Miscommunication In one recent public example, Air Canada deployed an AI-powered chatbot to handle customer service inquiries. When a customer asked about bereavement fare discounts, the chatbot confidently invented a policy that didn’t exist. The airline initially tried to avoid responsibility, but the court disagreed. In February 2024, a tribunal ruled that Air Canada was liable for the misinformation provided by its chatbot. This wasn’t just a technical glitch—it was a trust failure. The AI-generated text sounded plausible, helpful, and human, but it lacked grounding in policy, context, or shared understanding. In effect, the airline’s brand spoke out of both sides of its mouth and cost them. This is the risk when language is generated without intersubjectivity, oversight, or friction. The Linguistic Drift of AI: What the Data Tells Us About Language Decay It’s not just theory—research is now quantifying how generative AI systems are shifting the landscape of language itself. A study titled Playing with Words: Comparing the Vocabulary and Lexical Richness of ChatGPT and Humans found that AI-generated outputs consistently use a narrower vocabulary, with significantly fewer nouns and stylistic words than human writing. Building on this, an analysis of over 14 million PubMed abstracts revealed measurable shifts in word frequency following the rise of LLM use. While many precise, technical nouns faded, terms like “delves” and “showcasing” surged. The shift is not random; it’s a statistically driven flattening of language, where standard, action-oriented, or stylistic terms are promoted, and specificity is sidelined. Some researchers link this to a broader problem known as “model collapse.” As AI models are increasingly trained on synthetic data, including their outputs, they may degrade over time. This leads to a feedback loop where less diverse, less semantically rich language becomes the norm. The result is a measurable reduction in lexical, syntactic, and semantic diversity—the very fabric of meaning and precision. The implications are vast. If AI systems are deprioritizing nouns at scale, then the structures we use to hold ideas—people, places, identities, and concepts—are being eroded. In real time, we are watching the grammatical infrastructure of human thought being reweighted by machines that do not think. What AI’s Language Shift Means for Brands and Business Strategy The erosion of language precision has significant implications for businesses, particularly those that rely on storytelling, branding, and effective communication. Brands are built on narrative consistency, anchored by nouns, identities, and associations that accumulate cultural weight over time. However, as AI systems normalize probabilistic language and predictive phrasing, even brand voice becomes a casualty of convergence. Differentiation erodes—messaging blurs. Trust becomes more complicated to earn and more uncomplicated to mimic. As this Forbes piece outlines, there are serious reasons why brands must be cautious with generative AI when it comes to preserving authenticity and voice. Moreover, AI-powered content platforms optimize for engagement, not meaning. Businesses relying on LLMs to generate customer-facing content risk flattening their uniqueness in favor of what’s statistically safe. Without human oversight, brand language may drift toward the generic, the probable, and the forgettable. How To Safeguard Meaning in the Age of AI Resist the flattening. Businesses and individuals alike must reclaim intentionality in language. Here’s how—and why it matters: If you don’t define your brand voice, AI will average it. If you don’t protect the language of your contracts, AI will remix it. If you don’t curate your culture, AI will feed it back to you—statistically safe but spiritually hollow. Double down on human authorship: Don’t outsource your voice to a model. Use AI for augmentation, not substitution. Protect linguistic originality: Encourage specificity, metaphor, and vocabulary diversity in your communication. Nouns matter. Audit your outputs: Periodically review AI-generated materials. Look for signs of drift—has your language lost its edge? Invest in language guardianship: Treat your brand’s lexicon like intellectual property (IP). Define it. Defend it. Champion intersubjectivity: Allow shared context in both personal and professional communication. AI can simulate, but only humans can mean. The Necessity of Friction: Why Human Involvement Must Temper AI Friction isn’t a flaw in human systems—it’s a feature. It’s where meaning is made, thought is tested, and creativity wrestles with uncertainty. Automation is a powerful economic accelerant, but without deliberate pauses—without a human in the loop—we risk stripping away the qualities that make us human. Language is one of those qualities. Every hesitation, nuance, and word choice reflects cognition, culture, and care. Remove the friction, and you remove the humanity. AI can offer speed, fluency, and pattern-matching, but it can’t provide presence, and presence is where meaning lives. AI’s Closing Refrain: A Call to Remember Meaning Emily M. Bender, a professor of computational linguistics at the University of Washington, has emerged as one of the most principled and prescient critics of large language models. In her now-famous co-authored paper, "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots," she argues that these systems don’t understand language—they merely remix it. They are, in her words, “stochastic parrots”: machines that generate plausible-sounding language without comprehension or intent. Yet we’re letting those parrots draft our emails, write our ads, and even shape our laws. We’re allowing models trained on approximations to become arbiters of communication, culture, and identity. This is not language—it’s mimicry at scale. And mimicry, unchecked, becomes a distortion. When AI outputs are mistaken for understanding, the baseline of meaning erodes. The problem isn’t just that AI might be wrong. It’s that it sounds so right, we stop questioning it. In the name of optimization, we risk erasing the texture of human communication. Our metaphors, our double meanings, our moments of productive ambiguity—these are what make language alive. Remove that, and a stream of consensus-safe, risk-averse echo remains. Functional? Yes. Meaningful? Not really. The stakes aren’t just literary—they’re existential. If language is the connective tissue between thought and reality, and if that tissue is replaced with statistical scaffolding, thinking becomes outsourced. Once sharpened by friction, our voices become blurred in a sea of plausible phrasings. Without intersubjectivity, friction, or nouns, we are scripting ourselves out of the story, one autocomplete at a time We are not being silenced. We are being auto-completed. And the most dangerous part? We asked for it. Before we ask what AI can say next, we should ask: What has already gone unsaid? In this quiet war, we don’t lose language all at once. We lose it word by word—until we forget we ever had something to say. I asked brand strategist and storyteller Michelle Garside, whose work spans billion-dollar brands and purpose-driven founders, to share her perspective on what’s at risk as automation flattened language. Her response was both precise and profound: If language is being flattened, we need more people doing the opposite: excavating. Listening for what’s buried beneath the noise. Uncovering the phrase that unlocks the person. That’s not a prompt—it’s a process. And it’s a deeply human one. When someone says something that lands—not because it sounds good, but because it’s true. You can see it in their body. You can feel it in the silence that follows. No algorithm can replicate that because that moment isn’t statistical. It’s sacred. The risk isn’t just that AI will get things wrong. It’s that it will sound just right enough to stop us from looking deeper. To stop us from asking what’s real. To stop us from finding the words only we could say. We don’t need more words. We need more meaning. And meaning isn’t generated. It’s remembered. When it comes to language and AI, that’s the line to carry forward—not just because it sounds good, but because it’s true.

New Research By Shoving a Bed Frame Against the Door, This Pompeii Family Tried to Survive Mount Vesuvius’ Eruption Archaeologists are learning new details about the four individuals’ futile attempt to hide inside an ancient residence called the House of Helle and Phrixus A bed frame shoved against the door served as a makeshift barricade. Pompeii Archaeological Park In 79 C.E., Mount Vesuvius erupted, spewing ash and small volcanic pellets known as lapilli over the city of Pompeii. Nearly 1,950 years later, archaeologists are still sifting through the layers of debris and making remarkable discoveries about life—and death—in the ancient city. Researchers recently discovered four members of a family, including a child, who attempted to escape the eruption by barricading themselves inside a bedroom, according to a statement from the Pompeii Archaeological Park. Though their efforts were futile, their remains provide remarkable insight into the doomed city’s final moments. When the eruption began, most residents of Pompeii “had no clue what was happening,” Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the park and co-author of a new study published in the journal Scavi di Pompei, tells the New York Times’ Sara Novak. “Many thought the end of the world had come.” A majority of the 15,000 to 20,000 residents of Pompeii and nearby Herculaneum fled and survived the eruption. The four family members were among the roughly 2,000 Pompeians who remained when the city was destroyed. As Helle struggles in the sea, Phrixus reaches out to his sister from atop a flying ram. Pompeii Archaeological Park Archaeologists found the family’s remains in a small but stately residence known as the House of Helle and Phrixus, named after a fresco of the mythological siblings discovered on the dining room wall. In Greek myth, the siblings survive their stepmother’s attempt to sacrifice them to the gods by flying away on a ram with a golden fleece. While Phrixus escapes, Helle falls off the ram into the sea. The fresco captures the siblings reaching out to each other—Helle in the sea, Phrixus on the ram—in a fittingly futile attempt at rescue. The architectural features of the house may have accelerated the family’s demise. Like many Roman houses, the House of Helle and Phrixus featured an open-roofed atrium, intended to aid rainwater collection. But as lapilli fell from the sky during the first phase of the eruption, the rock debris, which reached up to nine feet in some locations, quickly flooded the house through the atrium. At first, the archaeological evidence shows, the four individuals tried to protect themselves by packing into a small room. They even pushed a wooden bed frame against the door, hoping that it would prevent the lapilli from entering.When that failed, the researchers think they pulled back the barricade and attempted to escape. Based on the location of the remains, they only got as far as the triclinium, or dining room. “This house, with its decorations and its objects, shows us people who tried to save themselves,” says Zuchtriegel in the statement, per a translation by La Brújula Verde’s Guillermo Carvajal. “They didn’t succeed, but their story is still here, beneath the ashes.” Over the centuries, the ash preserved the remains of the family, the wooden bed frame and other items, including a bronze amulet known as a bulla and a stash of amphorae filled with garum, a popular Roman fish sauce. Ash and lapilli flooded into through the open-roofed atrium, burying the house in up to nine feet of debris. Pompeii Archaeological Park Researchers don’t know that this particular family owned the House of Helle and Phrixus. The group may have taken refuge there after the owners fled, as Marcello Mogetta, an archaeologist and Roman art historian at the University of Missouri who wasn’t involved in the study, tells the Times. Still, the recovered objects offer a glimpse into Pompeian family life. For instance, the child was likely the one wearing the bronze bulla, as tradition dictated that boys wear such amulets for protection until adulthood. Additionally, traces of masonry materials suggest that the house was under renovation. As Zuchtriegel says in the statement, “Excavating Pompeii means confronting the beauty of art, but also the fragility of life.” Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.