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

In 1950, Claude Shannon used his wife as a human language model to test the limits of text compression, demonstrating that prediction and compression are mathematically equivalent. The experiment, now highlighted in a new 3Blue1Brown video, connects Shannon's foundational information theory to modern artificial intelligence.

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 The post How Claude Shannon used his wife as a language model in 1950 https://boingboing.net/2026/06/11/how-claude-shannon-used-his-wife-as-a-language-model-in-1950.html appeared first on Boing Boing https://boingboing.net .