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Benvenuti, Bienvenue, Bienvenidos, Croeso and Welcome.
Hi, I’m Juliet. Join me on my language learning journey and discover my thoughts on different aspects of language learning with the A Language Learning Tale Podcast. Today I’m talking about…
Should I Chat with an AI?
Using AI in language learning is all the rage right now. How do you feel about that? In general, I dislike the use of AI in creative pursuits, because one, it’s been trained on the work of artists, writers, composers, lyricists, I’m sure there are others, who spent a lot of time creating something that people would want to buy. Oh, yes, photographers and videographers, as well. All this without their permission or any compensation, although there are some moves to change that.
However, there are many uses of AI that will actually enhance lives. In medicine, for example.
Languages might also be one of those uses, because learning a language, ingesting a language, is a little different. Millions of people say the same things over and over every day. Regurgitating the most common expressions is not the same as imitating creative pursuits in seconds.
But, but, they got that information for free. Shouldn’t the services all be free? I guess that depends on how much work has been put into refining the results, which kind of begs the question, why didn’t you start with proper grammar rules and just use the AI for refining accents? That has to be possible.
Various apps, like Duolingo, are incorporating AI learning, at a cost. I don’t have this on my Duolingo, even though I have a subscription, at the moment, but more on that in a minute.
When I first heard about the AI tools they were developing in Duolingo, sometime last year, I think, it was something that would only be in their Max programme, which is pretty expensive, and would only be for a couple of languages, French and Spanish, both from English. That’s a pretty restrictive programme. I kind of get why, because you need to make sure these things are worth it, and you need to get the most bang for your development buck and AI is moving fast.
Jump to a couple of months ago and I saw a video about these tools that were being trialled with some users. One thing they had was that at certain steps on the path there was an AI asking you a question that you had to respond to verbally in the language. It was very short, in terms of interaction, but I think there were other potential tools as well, but not everyone has them to trial. The idea was for you to practice your language in a conversational way. Nothing wrong with that, if it’s a decent length conversation (it isn’t, as far as I could tell) and as long as it’s natural language and not Duolingo sentence language, which isn’t natural in most cases. How much do you want to bet it’s the latter?
Anyway, on investigating further, this will still only be available in Max and still only for French and Spanish from English. At this stage, I have to say, what’s the point? If you’re still too concerned about it to not allow it to at least be used in different languages from English to French and Spanish, how good is it, exactly? Is the AI hallucinating language? Is that what you’re worried about? Anyway, it is what it is. It won’t enhance the language learning of many learners, given the restricted nature.
About the same time, Chat GPT, which I believe is what Duolingo uses as a basis, launched a new chat version.
This, certainly on the app, is free to use. You do have to agree that conversations will be recorded. The fact that things are being recorded is, in some ways good. I watched a non-language-related video where someone was brainstorming their YouTube channel with it and it remembered details from one conversation to another. However, me being ultra-careful would say, I don’t think it’s a good idea to give ChatGPT personal details about yourself. Yes, you have to give it your name and your date of birth, but if you start talking about where you live, your family, anything else personal, who’s to say that ChatGPT won’t spit that out at some point in a totally unrelated context. I don’t care what assurances are given that such a thing won’t happen, because I’ve heard it said that no one truly understands how the large language models work their magic. If you want to talk about personal stuff for practice, make up a different persona - although that could also cause problems in the future, too, and ChatGPT wouldn’t acutally be hallucinating.
Anyway, the positives of conversations being recorded, and it remembering, is that you can potentially have more meaningful conversations. If you like talking about … no, not politics, that’s a dangerous one. How about if you like talking about astronomy, you could get right into the weeds with that over days, weeks, or even months. I’ll bet ChatGPT might even alert you to new things that you didn’t know about. So, that’s a plus.
But how natural are the conversations? Pretty natural, in terms of back and forth. The responses aren’t just spewing out facts, which is what I experienced on Copilot when people were saying, oh, you must use this for language learning. No. It was rubbish in that form, in my opinion. This has a much better flow to it. However, at the moment, these language models tend to only speak in fairly formal language, rather than anything in the least bit colloquial - so we’re bascially talking textbook language - again, what is the point of ingesting natural language, if you can’t reliably spit it out? So, you will have to bear this in mind.
But here’s the big caveat. This experience is from using it once. Every time I tried to log on after that, and I tried a lot of times over several days, it didn’t let me back in (I could get into the app, just not the chat) and now, I’ve pretty much consigned it to the can’t be bothered pile. If I can’t use it when I want to use it, then it’s of no use to me. Now, this might be my device, it’s old, the Internet, too much traffic, or a whole host of other things - like I was using the free version.
Therefore, this is potentially a good tool, but only when you can get on. If you’re prepared to pay for the premium ChatGPT service, maybe it will be better for you. I’m not going to do that, because if I were going to pay for something, I’d rather be talking to a real person, who I knew was speaking the language in a natural way.
Maybe, in a few months, I’ll give it another go. We’ll see.
So, I guess that’s my conclusion to this. If you have access to a language learning service that has AI and will allow you to chat in some form for free, then give it a go and see how it works for you. If not, think carefully about whether this is the best way to spend your money and be careful what you tell it.
That’s all for today’s episode. Don’t forget to join me again next time, for more language learning tips, tricks and tales and in the meantime, check out the A Language Learning Tale YouTube channel for additional, non-podcast content.
Ciao, salut, adiós, hwyl and bye for now.