Claims

Factual · Their own work or organisation

“some of the model names from the early days were all birds. So there was BERT”

Daniela Amodei, Anthropic president, interviewed · 2026 · Daniela Amodei Says Curiosity Is Underrated (Stanford GSB)

Amodei said she thought, as she was remembering it, that some early model names were bird names, and gave BERT as an example.

Mixed Partly true and partly false in roughly equal measure.

Said for an organisation they lead or work for; it counts on both records.

What would count as true or false

Judged on the substance as of 2026: whether some early AI model names were bird names, with BERT as one of them; the hedge 'as she remembered it' does not change the test. True if early model names followed a bird theme and BERT is a bird name. Mostly true if there was a bird-naming theme but BERT is a poor example of it. Mixed if early models were named on a related theme that included some bird names (for example a set of characters including a bird) while BERT itself is not a bird. Mostly false if the naming theme was something else and birds appear only incidentally. False if early model names had no bird theme and BERT is not a bird name.

Evidence

1. Why are so many AI systems named after Muppets? The Verge · 11 December 2019

   “To date, this new breed of language AIs includes an ELMo, a BERT, a Grover, a Big BIRD, a Rosita, a RoBERTa, at least two ERNIEs (three if you include ERNIE 2.0), and a KERMIT.”

2. Why are so many AI systems named after Muppets? The Verge · 11 December 2019

   “a surprising number of these tools are named after Muppets.”

3. Why are so many AI systems named after Muppets? The Verge · 11 December 2019

   “although Google refused multiple requests from The Verge to discuss the origins of the name, it’s widely assumed that the researchers, like those from Allen, had the Muppets in mind.”

4. Why Are So Many NLP Models Named After Muppets? DeepLearning.AI (The Batch) · 18 December 2019

   “Today, the Muppetware family includes Big BIRD, ERNIE, Kermit, Grover, RoBERTA, and Rosita.”

Reasoning

The Verge (E1, E2, E3) and The Batch (E4) say that early language models such as ELMo, BERT, Grover, Ernie and Kermit were named after Sesame Street Muppets, not birds. That set includes a model named "Big BIRD" (E1, E4); Google did not explain BERT's name, but it is widely assumed to refer to the Muppets rather than to a bird (E3). This matches the criteria's "mixed" case: the theme was a related one that included a bird, while BERT is not a bird.

Cite this claim

Daniela Amodei, “Amodei said she thought, as she was remembering it, that some early model names were bird names, and gave BERT as an example.” (said 2026). Verdict: mixed. Reliability API, claim c_c04147fed8e8, method 0.1.0+28da144b. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_c04147fed8e8