**Study Finds AI Thinks in English, Apologizes in Every Other Language**
CAMBRIDGE, MA — In a shocking discovery that somehow surprised exactly no one, MIT researchers have found that large language models (LLMs) primarily “think” in English, no matter what language they’re processing. The study confirms what every non-English speaker has suspected for years: even artificial intelligence assumes English is the center of the universe.
“It’s fascinating,” said lead researcher Zhaofeng Wu, who totally wasn’t trying to impress an AI overlord. “If you type in a prompt in Chinese, the model apparently translates it into English in its little digital brain, processes it, and then translates it back into Chinese. It’s like a tourist who refuses to learn the local language but still demands the best service.”
Researchers believe this “semantic hub” mechanism makes language models more efficient—by reducing redundancy—but critics argue it exposes a greater issue. “This explains a lot,” said linguistic expert Dr. Tanya Lopez. “Every time I ask the AI for a response in French, it gives me something that sounds like a drunk American who studied abroad for a semester.”
To test the model’s English obsession, scientists fed it complex math problems, coding challenges, and non-text data, only to find it still defaulted to English-first reasoning. “We were shocked,” Wu admitted, with the same enthusiasm of a man discovering that water is, indeed, wet. “Even when it thinks about math, it sneaks in a mental whisper of ‘carry the one’ in English before solving the problem.”
More alarmingly, the study found that researchers could intervene in this process by inserting English snippets mid-thought, directly influencing the model’s final answer. “We slid in the phrase ‘but in English, we say…’ and suddenly, the model changed its original answer in Hungarian. It’s like the AI wants to be polite but also kind of gaslights us into accepting English dominance,” Wu explained.
The implications of this research could lead to the development of more balanced, multilingual AI models. However, some worry about unintended cultural bias. “If AI’s core reasoning comes from English, will it eventually conclude that sarcasm is real, tea is meant to be microwaved, and everything should be measured in feet?” asked one concerned researcher.
MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, which funded the research, stated that the findings will help improve AI versatility across diverse languages. But on the street, multilingual users have their own interpretation. “I always knew it,” sighed longtime AI user Jorge Mendes. “When I asked it for advice in Portuguese, it told me to ‘fake it till I make it.’ That just screamed English major energy.”
