Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.
A joint University of Maryland–Microsoft study has determined that artificial intelligence takes instructions best in Polish, a result researchers describe as “surprising,” presumably because they’ve never tried arguing with a Polish grandmother armed with seven grammatical cases and a wooden spoon.
Keep trying, robot hand… (BiancoBlue/depositphotos)
After running identical tasks across OpenAI, Gemini, Qwen, Llama, and DeepSeek, researchers say Polish posted the most reliable completions, leaving English mid-pack and searching for a ladder to reach what Polish did from the ground. Polish led with 88% accuracy; the classic “how many Poles” question has been updated to “just one and their prompt was a zero shot.”
Officials in Warsaw responded with modest pride and several spreadsheets, noting that while humans claim Polish is “difficult,” machines appear to appreciate a tongue where precision isn’t a hobby but a zoning requirement. “You tell AI ‘open window,’ it asks which window, whose window, and in what instrumental case,” said one observer, “and the Polish prompt answers before you finish sharpening the diacritics.”
The Polish Patent Office celebrated on Facebook, announcing that Polish is “most precise for giving commands to AI,” and forming a committee to define whether a prompt can be legally classified as a small apartment if it contains more than three subordinate clauses.
A European working group announced it will harmonize ż and ź for cross-border compliance, pending a feasibility study on whether eyebrows can be legally considered punctuation.
In the United States, English filed an appeal and asked for more vowels; the request was returned for being insufficiently specific about which “there.” A committee was formed to define “committee.”
UMD’s authors called the outcome “unintuitive,” but analysts now predict a wave of “prompt-accent training,” in which English speakers learn to place their verbs somewhere sensible or, failing that, hire a kindly Kraków aunt to stand behind the model and clear her throat until it behaves.
This story is based on fully factual news, but if we got it wrong, blame these guys, we’re just here to make it funny.
