Harris attended the University of Georgia, the Instituto Tecnologico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, and the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. He later earned a master's degree in linguistics from Louisiana State University and a PhD in linguistics from MIT. Harris joined the MIT faculty as an assistant professor in 1967, where he remained until his retirement in 1996. During his tenure, he served as head of what was then called the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures. 'I met Jim when I came to MIT in 1977 as department head of the neonatal Department of Linguistics and Philosophy,' says Samuel Jay Keyser, MIT professor emeritus of linguistics. 'Throughout his career in the department, he never relinquished his connection to the unit that first employed him at MIT.' In his early days at MIT, when French, German, and Russian dominated as elite 'languages of science and world literature,' Harris championed, over some opposition, the introduction of Spanish language and literature courses....
For the first time, a brain implant has helped a bilingual person who is unable to articulate words to communicate in both of his languages. An artificial-intelligence (AI) system coupled to the brain implant decodes, in real time, what the individual is trying to say in either Spanish or English. The findings1, published on 20 May in Nature Biomedical Engineering, provide insights into how our brains process language, and could one day lead to long-lasting devices capable of restoring multilingual speech to people who can't communicate verbally. 'This new study is an important contribution for the emerging field of speech-restoration neuroprostheses,' says Sergey Stavisky, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Davis, who was not involved in the study. Even though the study included only one participant and more work remains to be done, 'there's every reason to think that this strategy will work with higher accuracy in the future when combined with other recent advances', Stavisky says....
Imagine that fake news and political polarization have reduced the number of democracies. That the advance of digitalization and Artificial Intelligence has not been properly governed and has increased inequality, and expelled millions of people from the labor market. The stakes are high: 76 countries 'more than half of the world's population' will hold elections this year. And crucial political decisions will have to be made regarding some of the main societal dilemmas we face. Spain is a full democracy. It is an open, modern and tolerant country that defends the European project, but also the globalist dream that inspired the creation of the United Nations and the Bretton Woods institutions. And it is happening in Gaza, where 24,000 people have died in just 100 days and hundreds of thousands stand on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe. Elderly people, women and innocent children who have lost their homes, their jobs, their families. And are now on the verge of losing their hope. We recognize Israel's legitimate right to defend itself against a vile and monstrous terrorist attack. But we also demand the respect of international humanitarian law. That is why, here today, I would like to reiterate ' once again ' the need for an immediate ceasefire and for convening an international conference to implement a definitive solution to this long-lasting conflict. A solution that recognizes the existence of two States, Israel and Palestine, living in peace and security....
The generative AI boom has put a spring in the step of Correcto, a Madrid-based language writing tool startup focused on Spanish speakers that's today announcing $7 million in seed funding. The round is led by London-based Octopus Ventures, with Carya Venture Partners and River Park Ventures also contributing. The founding team began work on their idea to build a Grammarly-style auto-editing tool for correcting written Spanish at the back end of 2021 ' before generative AI tools like ChatGPT had blasted onto the scene and grabbed global attention. Studying and working abroad led co-founders Abraham Lopez Lee (CEO) and Ignacio Prieto Mayorga (COO) to use and appreciate tech tools like Grammarly which, they recount, helped them improve the quality of their written English. And they recount being surprised they couldn't find comparable tools for correcting Spanish grammar and syntax, even as years of living outside Spain put a bit of a dent in their own confidence at writing professionally in their mother tongue, meaning they were all the more keen for a good tool to exist. So, along with a third (technical) co-founder, CTO Antonio Triguero Noriega, they set to work on an MVP....
