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Cohere Labs has launched an open science project for a cross-cultural riddle benchmark, testing models trained mainly on English data with cultural puzzles such as Hungarian ones. According to information published on the Cohere product and research blog on October 22, 2026, the tests found that the answers given by the models sounded plausible but lacked culture-specific facts, and sometimes produced hallucinations. The project was initiated by Boczka Károly and Cohere Labs researcher Julia Kreutzer, and attracted more than 100 contributors from over 50 countries, including 15-year-old American high school student Henry Gagnier and Canadian retired teacher Jane Smith. Participants noted that the models had almost zero knowledge of languages such as Bugis, and cultural understanding dropped to zero along with it. The project is currently in its initial stage after the launch of the open science project, and no subsequent progress has been disclosed.
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Cohere Labs Open Science Project: Can AI Understand Culture?Developments
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Cohere Labs launches open science project for a cross-cultural riddle benchmark
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Oct 22
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Cohere Labs Open Science Project: Can AI Understand Culture?
Cohere Labs' open science project tested models trained primarily on English data with cultural puzzles such as Hungarian ones, and found that the models' answers sounded plausible but lacked culture-specific facts, and sometimes produced hallucinations. The project was initiated by Boczka Károly and Cohere Labs researcher Julia Kreutzer, and attracted more than 100 contributors from over 50 countries, including Henry Gagnier, a 15-year-old American high school student, and Jane Smith, a retired Canadian teacher. Participants noted that the models have almost zero knowledge of languages such as Bugis, and cultural understanding drops to zero along with it.