LaSAI research lab

Language Science & Artificial Intelligence · 语言科学智能

Welcome to LaSAI — the Language Science & Artificial Intelligence research lab at the School of Foreign Languages, Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Directed by Dr. Ercong Nie (聂耳聪) [Page], LaSAI studies language as both an object of artificial intelligence and a window into intelligence itself. We connect natural language processing, large language models, linguistics, cognition, and the digital humanities to build AI that is multilingual, interpretable, efficient, and human-centered.

Using language science to better connect, understand, and build AI. Using AI to advance language science. 以语言科学为理解智能的入口和连接智能的媒介，以人工智能拓展语言科学。

Multilingual AI LLM Interpretability Language & Cognition AI for Humanities

News

  1. Two papers were accepted to EMNLP 2026 (one Main Conference paper and one Findings paper), on long-horizon video reasoning and mechanistic interpretability of language abilities in large language models. Main paper · Findings paper
  2. We co-organized “大语言模型与数字人文的方法和应用暨上海交通大学首届数字人文暑期高端研讨会”. Ercong delivered the keynote What Can Linguistics Bring to Large Language Models? News · Slides
  3. Our work on cross-lingual NLP for historical-language treebank construction was published in Digital Scholarship in the Humanities. Paper
  4. Ercong gave an invited talk on cross-lingual failures in large language models at Jingyuan Sun's group, University of Manchester.
  5. Ercong chaired the “Language Science and LLMs” session at the 3rd Language Science and Intelligence Forum.
  6. LaSAI began a new chapter as Ercong joined the School of Foreign Languages at SJTU as a tenure-track assistant professor.

Team

This could be you!

We welcome motivated students interested in multilingual AI, interpretability, language science, and human-centered NLP.