This initiative envisions a research community rooted in the humanities that will foster interdisciplinary collaboration across the Institute to deepen our understanding of generative AI’s impact on cross-linguistic and cross-cultural communication. Collaborators from diverse fields are invited to share perspectives and engage real-world opportunities and challenges presented by AI technologies in underinvestigated sociolinguistic contexts.

The Language/AI Incubator is a collaboration jointly led by Per Urlaub, Director of Global Languages and Professor of the Practice in German and Second Language Studies, and Leo Celi, Research Director and Principal Research Scientist, Institute for Medical Engineering and Science. It originated through a MITHIC Meeting of the Minds in October 2024.

The Language/AI Incubator held its first colloquium on May 14, 2025, to further explore connections between participants’ fields in language, intercultural communication, education, medicine, and technology, and to focus the group’s future efforts. Presentations included:

• Quieting the Amygdala with Echoes: Dialogic Medicine from Seed to Forest—Mena Ramos, Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Global Ultrasound Institute
• Technology and the Liberal Arts—Alfred Z. Spector, Professor of Practice, MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
• WorldMedQA—Yuanchao Ma, Visiting PhD Student, MIT Laboratory for Computational Physiology
• Enhancing Language Proficiency with Technology—Douglas A. Jones, Senior Technical Staff, MIT Lincoln Laboratory

The Incubator will meet again in August 2025 for practical collaboration on a cross-linguistic data science project in the medical training field.