AI learns language through a baby’s eyes

By strapping a camera to a child’s head, researchers have gained an insight into how children acquire language. A baby boy wore the camera for around one hour twice a week, from the age of six months to around two years. Researchers trained an AI system on frames from the video and words spoken to Sam, transcribed from the recording. It learnt to recognise words such as ‘crib’ and ‘ball’ by building associations between images and words, without any other prior knowledge about language. That challenges the theory that babies need some innate knowledge about how language works, says AI researcher Wai Keen Vong, who co-authored the research.