Scientists have trained an AI through the eyes of a baby

For decades linguists have argued over how children learn language. Some think that babies are born as “blank slates” who pick up language simply from experience—hearing, seeing and playing with the world. Others argue that experience is not enough and that babies’ brains must be hardwired to make acquiring language easy.

AI models such as GPT-4 have done little to settle the debate. The way these models learn language—by trawling through reams of text data from millions of web pages—is vastly different to the experiences of babbling babies.