AI's effect on language teachers

[realmayo]

On 5/7/2023 at 10:40 AM, roddy said:

The outcomes are hard to predict. Maybe we end up with teachers able to handle three times as many students with AI assistants. But maybe the associated reduction in costs means four times as many people start learning languages and overall there are more “teaching” jobs. Maybe live translation tech become so good demand for language learning plummets.

 

Definitely agree - internet and email were supposed to remove the demand for postal deliveries.

[SunnySideUp]

On 5/8/2023 at 9:57 AM, Lu said:

Google Translate is now how many years old? and it still can't handle Chinese well. I just fed it a paragraph of 平凡的世界 and for some reason it just skips an entire line and mistranslates one phrase into the opposite meaning.

I second what Lu said. There were the same claims made when Google Translate and others came about, essentially saying it would be such a game changer and the skill of language learning/translating would become more or less obsolete because we'd all go running around with our phones using speech-to-text and then have it all automatically translated. Just doesn't work. So far, whenever a Chinese speaker wanted to get something across they thought I didn't fully understand, they first had to manually correct whatever characters their voice input had come up with (ok fair, they didn't speak super standard Mandarin), but the English translation usually made little sense and it was easier for me to look at the written characters and figure it out that way. And it gets even worse if you want to translate into other languages than English... so I'm skeptical at best.

 

[Moshen]

Quote

There were the same claims made when Google Translate and others came about, essentially saying it would be such a game changer and the skill of language learning/translating would become more or less obsolete because we'd all go running around with our phones using speech-to-text and then have it all automatically translated. Just doesn't work. 

 

I agree.  This reminded me of the time when I was checking into a hotel in a remote part of China.  The clerk assumed I couldn't speak Chinese and typed something into her phone's translation app and showed it to me.  "How long do you want to live here?"

 

Because I knew Chinese, and I was familiar with Chinese-speaking people using the English word "live" where native English speakers would say "stay," I understood what she meant.  If I didn't know any Chinese, this translation would have left me baffled.  

 

And I see issues like this in Google Translate's results all the time.

[roddy]

On 5/8/2023 at 7:42 PM, realmayo said:

Definitely agree - internet and email were supposed to remove the demand for postal deliveries

And I suspect (not checking) that sales of writing paper and pens have plummeted, but revenue from packaging materials and artisan gift pens have rocketed, etc etc. 

 

Money will keep rocketing around the world at speed, it’ll just stop at different places. Which isn’t much consolation if you’re one of the people Santa doesn’t visit. The economic implication of AI isn't collapse, it's disruption and quite possible localised collapses.

[geraldc]

I joined here nearly 20 years ago. There have been numerous tech advances in that time. Character recognition on phones, text to speech, etc. Of the advances I have barely used them at all other than to play with.   

 

The main issues with tech are how they can influence how and what you think. Some warn against auto suggest for pinyin, as with people being lazy, they'll just go with whatever is suggested as it's faster.  Control auto suggest and control how a billion people think/write (or at least influence the next word in the sentance).

 

It's Skynet all over again, once a computer is self aware, does it choose to go with what the goverment says, or an alternative?  Which one is most likely going to result in it being turned off?  What sort of history will it decide to teach you?  If AI comes up with a syllabus, is it a good syllabus?  If there's live translate, will it translate "dodgy" material, or will it obey the government...

 

For me AI is going to be useful when you can tell your foreign phone to get you a local phone number, working wechat account, and a VPN as soon as you touch down in China, and it does it all by itself.  AI should deal with boring mundane stuff, not the fun learning bit.

 

The real test is will AI do a scan of all the exisitng teaching resources and decide if mamahuhu is a phrase a beginner needs to know or not?

[joshuawbb]

Having been a language teacher in the past (still in the field though), one of the deciding factors in the debate is your own acceptance and interaction with it.

 

In translation at least, I see ChatGPT as an incredible leap forward in complexity and quality. Gone are the days of garbled Google Translate sentences - services such as Deepl alongside ChatGPT are producing extremely accurate text translations.

 

In terms of ethics, it's quite true that a translator could take a commercial text, then translate it using Deepl before using ChatGPT to proofread and remove most evidence of Deepl's usage, leaving the easy job of personalisation and minor restructuring. Naturally this would be unethical for a translator to do, but it illustrates what customers could actually do for free in order to get a workable, if not reliable result.

 

As for teaching, I don't think ChatGPT is at the level of replacing teachers yet. There's much to be said for a classroom or human 1-to-1 environment, and the direct participation of a person. People give off subtle social cues that are difficult to simulate, and will think, react and speak at a more realistic speed.

 

However, I'd say it's important for both teachers and translators not to fall into the trap of rejecting technical advances due to perceiving them as a threat. You survive in a field by adapting, and that means learning everything you can about the new tool. You won't gain any high ground by shutting it out.

 

You can see a similar scenario playing out in real time across universities in the UK. Given ChatGPT's explosion in use almost overnight, universities are rushing to publish their own policies and pamphlets regarding its use.

 

Purely by observation (so nothing scientific), student comfort seems to be higher at universities embracing ChatGPT as "reality now" and forming policies that teach ethical use of it (e.g. how it factors into plagiarism), as opposed to outright banning it and aggressively checking student assignments for evidence of its use.

 

For translation, there's probably a good chance it will devalue the work of career translators, but it's not likely to end these careers. Translators still hold skills that AI cannot yet emulate, and AI tools can be used by translators to improve efficiency.

 

For teaching, I think ChatGPT has potential to greatly enhance student engagement outside the classroom. Students would have a makeshift language partner and assignment checker, which may give the teacher more time to work on restructuring lessons and improving content.

 

There might be a day when ChatGPT or other AI services can simulate a competent human teacher. It may well devalue the worth of a teacher's work, but it's also a learning opportunity. If you don't want your job replaced by AI, you've got to embrace and learn from it before you can restructure your work and adapt.

[abcdefg]

On 5/6/2023 at 1:28 AM, Jan Finster said:

At that stage, language teachers (for adults) will have become largely unnecessary.

 

My face-to-face Chinese teachers, when I was living in China, often gave me recommendations on good restaurants, told me what local fruit was in season, what movie was worth seeing, the best bus to take to get to the museum from here, and what herbs their mother recommended to cure a sore throat. One teacher invited me home for a meal during wild mushroom season. Another took me back to her village for a holiday. I stayed in her family home, met her mom and dad, met her grandmother. One teacher accompanied me to the hospital when I was sick and new in town, before I had learned the intricacies of the Chinese system. Another teacher took me to get my mobile phone service revised at China Mobile's big, bewildering service center. Another teacher took me to open my first Chinese bank account. One teacher and her husband took me in tow to try and buy shoes for my big foreigner feet  Another teacher helped me find an apartment to rent. One showed me how to get a discounted bus pass (爱人卡). One showed me how to use the rental bike system, including how to make sense out of the app on my phone. One teacher and a couple of her friends took me to a neighboring town to see yellow spring flowers in bloom. We rode the train to and from, stayed overnight. 

 

Life would have been harder and less fun without a series of wonderful teachers. Generous and kind. They hugely enriched my China years.