Generative AI as a Linguistic Equalizer in Global Science

Abstract

For decades, the dominance of English has created a substantial barrier in global science, disadvantaging non-native speakers. The recent rise of generative AI (GenAI) offers a potential technological response to this long-standing inequity. We provide the first large-scale evidence testing whether GenAI acts as a linguistic equalizer in global science. Drawing on 5.65 million scientific articles published from 2021 to 2024, we compare GenAI-assisted and non-assisted publications from authors in non-English-speaking countries. Using text embeddings derived from a pretrained large language model (SciBERT), we measure each publication's linguistic similarity to a benchmark of scientific writing from U.S.-based authors and track stylistic convergence over time. We find significant and growing convergence for GenAI-assisted publications after the release of ChatGPT in late 2022. The effect is strongest for domestic coauthor teams from countries linguistically distant from English. These findings provide large-scale evidence that GenAI is beginning to reshape global science communication by reducing language barriers in research.