Earlier this year I gave a talk about my research at Oxford’s All Souls College, and worked with a chef to design an accompanying menu.

Thinking about my work in southwest Western Australia, I typed “Boorloo”, the Nyungar name for the City of Perth.

Autocorrect had other ideas. It replaced it with “Barolo” – which, I thought, made for a fitting wine choice on the night.

It was an amusing moment, but also a revealing one. The system’s dictionary, trained largely on mainstream English data, didn’t know what Boorloo was, so it reached for a more familiar alternative. This seemingly minor miscorrection offers a glimpse into how language technologies are shaped – including which words they recognise, and which they overlook.

Why does this happen?

Part of the answer is that technologies such as automatic speech recognition convert spoken language into text. Transcription is often presented as a straightforward technical exercise: you listen, you write down what was said.

But every transcription protocol carries within it assumptions about what standardised speech looks like. In the words of linguist Mary Bucholtz, “all transcripts take sides”.

In practice, the standardised language is almost always the “prestige dialect” of powerful institutions. For English, that may be the variety used in the Oxford English Dictionary or by the BBC.

Recent research from Cornell University and Carnegie Mellon shows what this means in concrete terms.

When people watched a video presentation with automatically generated, error-prone subtitles, they consistently rated the speaker as less clear and less knowledgeable than viewers who saw the same presentation with accurate captions. The quality of the transcription affected not only how viewers perceived the speaker, but also the content of the talk.

Automated systems, amplified consequences

The stakes are particularly high for First Nations people in Australia. Here, the mismatch between the conventions of transcription and the actual practice of communication can be severe.

In many Indigenous communities, pauses and silences themselves function as meaningful acts of communication.

In places such as Wadeye in Australia’s Northern Territory, a sustained silence is not a gap to be filled. Instead it is part of the structure of what is being communicated.

Transcription systems developed in northern hemisphere academic contexts will generally render those silences with hesitation markers, ellipses, or editorial cuts, stripping out meaning.

Common words in languages other than English (such as “Boorloo” for Perth) go unrecognised. They may be mistranscribed to fit the language models on which technology is trained.

In legal, medical and welfare contexts, transcription can determine someone’s liberty, diagnosis, or entitlements. Here, systematic misrepresentation of non-standardised language is a justice issue.

Tools using artificial intelligence (AI) for transcription are now being deployed in hospitals and GP practices across Australia, resulting in mistakes, omissions and so-called hallucinations. A recent study of several AI scribes found all of them made errors in transcription and note-taking.

About half of the samples also included factual inaccuracies, with hallucinations occurring frequently, fabricating diagnoses, or listing medications that were never taken. In one case, a male patient was even recorded as being on the contraceptive pill.

Making conventions visible

Making things better includes developing more diverse models for automated speech recognition.

But for anyone producing transcripts right now – in journalism, oral history, the law, clinical records, or sociolinguistic research – certain obligations apply. Make your conventions explicit, acknowledge what your system cannot represent, and resist the impulse to normalise speech into something legible to an imagined standard reader.

Rendering speech into writing may seem natural, but writing is itself a technology. The task is not to achieve perfect objectivity, but to be visible and accountable for decisions about what is included and excluded, and how those decisions are made.

Celeste Rodriguez Louro receives funding from the Australian Research Council and Google.

US President Donald Trump’s threats against Iran since the war began have targeted not just the country’s military capabilities, but its entire civilisation.

In recent days, he has threatened that Iran would be “blown off the face of the earth” if it attacks US ships trying to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

He’s previously pledged to send Iran back to the “Stone Age”, and warned that “a whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again”.

These statements show not only extreme belligerence, but Trump’s complete lack of understanding of Iran’s long, resilient culture and civilisation and the fortitude of its people.

Iran has been subjected to much internal strife and foreign power intervention, but it has never been colonised or subjugated. At every difficult moment in their history, Iranians have fought to preserve what is theirs.

Persian influence in ancient Greece and Rome

Since the Greco-Persian Wars (499 BCE), Persia has served as the West’s ultimate “other”: a dark and despotic oriental villain menacing an enlightened West.

This is despite Persia’s return of exiled Jews in Babylon to Jerusalem to rebuild their temple in 538 BCE, and its tolerance of diversity in the world’s first truly multicultural empire.

The victories of a coalition of Greek city-states over the Achaemenid Persian imperial forces at Salamis (480 BCE) and Marathon (490 BCE) are considered pivotal moments in the history of Western civilisation.

Yet this was just a minor setback for Persia. In fact, Persia continued to play a decisive role in Greek affairs. Persian gold helped Sparta defeat Athens in the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE), and Persia was often the most important mediator in Greek affairs.

The Parthian and Sasanian Empires that followed the Achaemenids in Persia then challenged the Romans.

In 260 CE, Sasanian Emperor Shapur I captured Roman Emperor Valerian in battle – an unprecedented act. A century later, Shapur II’s army fought off an attempted invasion by Emperor Julian, killing him in the process.

Western triumphal narratives tend to forget that Persia repeatedly humbled the greatest Western empire in ancient times.

Surviving invasions from the east and west

Alexander the Great conquered Persia militarily. However, he embraced Persian culture, which outlasted Greek influence in the region.

The advent of Islam did not extinguish Persia’s civilisation or resilience, either. Islamic leaders preserved Persian language and culture, kept pre-Islamic festivals such as Nowruz (the 3,000-year-old Persian New Year), and adapted Zoroastrian concepts into Shiite Islam’s emphasis on resistance to tyranny.

The Mongols’ multiple invasions (between 1219 and 1258) devastated Iran, yet core elements of Persian civilisation survived. Persian power flourished again, especially under the Safavid dynasty (1501–1736).

During the Qajar dynasty (1789–1925), Persia was squeezed by the Anglo-Russian rivalry of Great Game era, but was not subdued.

During the second world war, Iran was occupied by the British in the oil-rich south and the Soviets in the north. However, both powers pledged, along with the United States, to respect Iran’s sovereignty and withdraw at the end of the war.

A turbulent 20th century

This episode rejuvenated Iranian nationalism and prompted a movement to free Iran from traditional major power rivalries and gain control over its own resources. This especially pertained to oil, since the British had controlled Iran’s oil reserves through the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) from the early 19th century.

In 1951, a long-time nationalist-reformist, Mohammad Mossadegh, was elected prime minister and promptly nationalised the AIOC, sparking a major dispute with London.

Mossadegh also sought to limit the power of Iran’s monarchy in favour of democratic reforms, causing a conflict with the young, pro-Western Mohammad Reza Shah, who was still the country’s reigning monarch.

The shah was forced into exile in 1953, only to be returned to the throne days later when Mossadegh was overthrown in a covert operation by the US Central Intelligence Agency, with MI6’s help. (Fifty years later, US President Barack Obama acknowledged the CIA’s role in the coup.)

The US backed the shah as a pillar of American hegemony in the Middle East. In return, US oil companies received a 40% share of Iran’s oil industry.

Yet the shah was able to transform his dependent relationship with the US into one of interdependence. Iran became a pivotal player in the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), and in the region.

In the wake of the 1973–74 energy crisis, then-US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger warned the United States would react with force if it was “strangled” by a cut in oil deliveries – a veiled message to the shah.

The Iranian revolution of 1978–79 then toppled the shah and enabled his chief religious and political opponent, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, to assume power. Khomeini declared Iran an Islamic Republic with an anti-US and anti-Israel posture.

He essentially based his rule in the historic pride Iranians held as a people in charge of their destiny.

Khomeini and his successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei sought to entrench Shia political Islamism as the ideological guide and legitimate foundation of the state. But they sought to blend this with the Iranians’ sense of civilisational, cultural and nationalist identity, especially in the face of outside aggression.

‘Iran is my land’

The celebrated Persian-speaking poet Abul-Qasim Ferdowsi (940–1020 CE) once said:

Iran is my land, and the whole world is under my feet. The people of this land are the possessors of virtue, art and bravery. They have no fear of roaring lions.

As Iran’s standoff with the US continues, it appears the regime is prepared for the long haul against yet another military foe.

But there is no military solution to the conflict. Diplomacy within the framework of mutual respect and trust is the best way forward. Otherwise, the region and the world may remain captive to an energy and economic crisis that could have been resolved through negotiations, rather than war.

As for the future of the Islamic government, that needs to be determined by the Iranian people.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Every evening, as they move from place to place through the forest, chimpanzees stop to build a nest – most often in a tree – to sleep in. Using a selection of branches, leaves and twigs, they create comfortable and safe spaces to get some shuteye.

Like human beds, these are places to rest – but they also help chimps stay warm or cool and protect themselves against the weather. As you might expect, how and where chimpanzees build their nests depends on things like temperature, humidity, wind and rainfall.

But how do they make these choices? Previous research has shown the construction is related to the conditions at the time when the creatures are building the nest.

In new research, published today in Current Biology, my colleagues and I show that chimps are a little bit cleverer than you might expect: they seem to build their nests in ways that anticipate what the overnight weather will be.

A year in Rwanda

We conducted a field study on eastern chimpanzees in Nyungwe National Park, Rwanda, a cool and humid mountain forest. Over a 12-month period, we collected detailed data on the structure of nests, the characteristics of their chosen sites, and the kinds of trees the chimps chose.

We also measured how well different kinds of nests insulate against cold and heat. At the same time, we made detailed records of weather conditions when the nests were being built and throughout the night.

This let us test whether chimpanzees respond primarily to immediate environmental conditions, or whether their nesting decisions are better explained by the conditions they experience later during the night.

Chimpanzees are always adjusting their behaviour

Our results show chimpanzees consistently adjust their nesting behaviour in relation to environmental conditions. They preferred to build nests in places that were warmer, more humid and less exposed to wind than surrounding areas.

Nest structure and insulation varied systematically with environmental conditions. In cooler and wetter conditions, nests were thicker and deeper – indicating the chimpanzees put more effort into insulation when conditions are tougher.

We also found that factors such as the width and depth of the nest influenced its insulating ability.

The chimpanzees tended to build more insulating nests when weather was colder and when it was more humid, both during nest-building and overnight.

In cooler and wetter conditions, the chimps also built their nests higher, in taller trees with denser leaf cover. This makes sense: it would be a more stable microclimate with more shelter from rain.

Are chimps thinking ahead?

Importantly, nesting decisions aligned more closely with overnight environmental conditions than with those at the time of construction. When we took overnight weather into account, we found we could explain the variation in nesting behaviour much better than if we used only the current conditions.

One possible explanation is that chimpanzees use environmental cues, such as shifts in temperature, humidity or atmospheric pressure, that are linked to upcoming weather.

These cues may allow them to adjust nest-building behaviour in advance. Does this mean they predict or forecast future weather? Not quite.

But it does show their behaviour is consistent with reacting to environmental signals that are associated with later conditions. Either way, the chimps display a remarkable sensitivity to their environment – and a grasp of how to live in it.

Hassan Al Razi works for the University of Western Australia. He receives funding through a doctoral scholarship, the Primate Action Fund, and the Primate Society of Great Britain.