Elie observed and recorded the sounds the zebra finches made and classified the calls according to the situation and the bird that made them. Elie observed and recorded the sounds the zebra finches made and classified the calls according to the situation and the bird that made them. A scientist who decoded the dictionary that a bird uses to communicate has won a $100,000 prize for making progress towards a world in which humans can talk to the animals - without being met with a blank response. Dr Julie Elie at the University of California, Berkeley, was awarded the 2026 Coller-Dolittle prize for two-way interspecies communication after working out the 11 core calls in the zebra finch vocabulary and their meanings. Her work revealed how the birds announce who they are and what they are doing, and recognise one another regardless of what they are saying by using individual signatures.

With help from machine learning software, computer scientists may have unmasked the identity of Q, the founder of the QAnon movement. In a sprawling report published on Saturday, The New York Times shared the findings of two independent teams of forensic linguists who claim they've identified Paul Furber, a South African software developer who was one of the first to draw attention to the conspiracy theory, as the original writer behind Q. They say Arizona congressional candidate Ron Watkins also wrote under the pseudonym, first by collaborating with Furber and then later taking over the account when it eventually moved to post on his father's 8chan message board. The two teams of Swiss and French researchers used different methodologies to come to the same conclusion. The Swiss one, made up of two researchers from startup OrphAnalytics, used software to break down Q's missives into patterns of three-character sequences.

The #GirlsInAI2021 international hackathon by Teens in AI was attended by 83 teams composed of over 950 participants from 23 different countries. The first prize was won by a French team, composed of three teenagers aged 16 to 17. They designed Hear-Me, an application based on artificial intelligence for people with hearing loss. The Hear-Me app is an AI-based tool combined with a device that aims to improve communication and interaction for people with hearing loss in face-to-face situations. The platform aims to help hearing impaired people in particular contexts, such as the one that requires wearing a mask during the Covid-19 crisis.