# How Claude Shannon used his wife as a language model in 1950

> Source: <https://boingboing.net/2026/06/11/how-claude-shannon-used-his-wife-as-a-language-model-in-1950.html>
> Published: 2026-06-11 19:34:39+00:00

Grant Sanderson's new [3Blue1Brown video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6DKRf-fAAM) starts from a 1940s question — how far can you compress text? — and arrives at why it matters for AI.

The bridge is from Claude Shannon's information theory: "prediction and compression are mathematically equivalent," two sides of the same coin. — [Read the rest ](https://boingboing.net/2026/06/11/how-claude-shannon-used-his-wife-as-a-language-model-in-1950.html)

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