Language In The Age Of AI: The Cost Of Convenience

September 5th, 2023, marked my last working day at a high school in Kolkata, where I had served as an English teacher for almost four years. On my final day, amidst gift-wrapped pens, portraits sketched by students, letters, cards, collages, and photo frames, I received a few poems. Most of them conveyed the teenage anguish of watching a teacher leave.

This piece is related to three of the poems I read, each of which resembled the others while still being distinct. What struck me first was that they didn’t seem to be written by the students I thought I knew. Moreover, they were composed in such a matter-of-fact, generalized manner that they could have been written about anyone.

When I got home, I decided to test a theory and asked ChatGPT to “write a poem for a teacher who is leaving school.” There it was—a poem with an AABB rhyme scheme, declaring, “The chalk may fade, the words may end,/But knowledge stays—it does not bend.”

Love is in the details; we have seen it for ourselves. This was my first encounter with AI as a teacher, and needless to say, I was mortified to find that love—and those cherished details—had been rendered unnecessary and sacrificed at the altar of perfect grammar, meter, and work-made-easy through outsourcing.

For a while, educators worldwide have been discussing new methods for the classroom—to teach critical thinking and problem-solving to students, incorporating AI. While I acknowledge the effort to be optimistic about its role in the classroom, my real struggle as an English teacher began while teaching ‘Writing’ to different age groups.

For the essays I am responsible for supervising, I often find grammar-checking tools downloaded onto our computers. Despite having all the writing aids blocked, we are aware that asking a teenager not to do something rarely works. “But even my dad uses them,” some of my students argue. So what라이브 바카라 the harm?

For those of us who grew up without AI, large language models serve as an aid. There is no denying how standardizing the English language has helped millions of people worldwide for whom language has always been a barrier to expressing their thoughts and ideas. However, for the new generation of learners, AI has become a crutch that is being relied upon from such an early age, that they are refusing to learn to walk. It is the ultimate shortcut to avoiding the hard work of making mistakes and learning from them.

As an educator, I find this growing apathy among students to engage with language alarming. It라이브 바카라 not because I’m insecure about losing my job to AI someday, but because I’m concerned about what AI means for young writers who are growing up to be the future practitioners of language. I fear that, instead of teaching language, we’ll someday be teaching our kids how to curate the perfect prompt for an AI bot to provide the best possible results.

Learning any language is not a static process. It involves constantly evolving, refining one라이브 바카라 speech, adjusting one라이브 바카라 tone based on context clues, and even accepting or rejecting words as one라이브 바카라 worldview changes. It is the culmination of everything we’ve read and been moved by, the people we’ve listened to, the conversations we’ve had, and the aspirations we hold.

Every book we've picked up, every poem that has lingered in our minds, the lyrics of our favorite songs, every meaningful conversation that has left an imprint– contribute to the way we engage with language. Sometimes, we seek out words to replicate the eloquence of someone we admire. Other times, language seeps into us without our realizing it.

The vocabulary we choose reflects our admiration for the eloquence we've encountered in someone –whether a mentor, a writer, a stranger, a podcaster, or a friend– whose words have resonated with us. If anything, language helps us place ourselves in the world.

Besides, language is deeply political as it is a fundamental part of our identity. It doesn't just communicate ideas. It signals who we are, where we come from, and what we stand for. It often dictates what is to become of us. Every dialect, accent, and colloquialism is proof of belonging, and sometimes, even a symbol of resistance. When we speak or write, we often position ourselves within cultural narratives and societal structures.

Throughout history, language has been deployed as a tool to exercise control—empires imposing their languages on colonized people, governments dictating what is "proper" speech, educational systems deciding what official languages should be spoken…the list is extensive.

If AI, which is largely developed within the profit-driven, techno-capitalist framework, becomes the gatekeeper of language, whose version of ‘correct’ or ‘appropriate’ will it uphold? What cultural nuances will be sidelined for not being up to the "standard"? This leads me to the question: Can language truly be standardized without dialects and colloquialisms being left behind?

If our ability to communicate in a diverse, nuanced manner is stripped away, we risk losing our capacity for empathy, for understanding each other's experiences. The politics of love, solidarity, empathy, and care mandates the elasticity of language.

Whereas the politics of hate, exclusion, division, and control often thrives on oversimplification and rigid binaries. If the AI-driven language reduces human complexities to a standardized monotone, how do we maintain the ability to choose between these moral landscapes? What happens to our individuality that shines through even our mistakes–especially through our mistakes? I suppose what we collectively stand to lose here is our privilege of encountering language through our lived experiences.

This looks a lot like the panic each generation faces when confronted with a change that, for better or for worse, alters the world as you know it. My parents faced it with smartphones and the internet. From access to information and media consumption to consumer habits —everything changed overnight, as they would recall.

There라이브 바카라 always that one generation that remembers the ‘before’ and the ‘after.’ I am curious to find out what the world ‘after’ the AI boom will look like—it need not be a world I’d like. In all likelihood, it won’t be, since the future of the world aspires to create AGI– a hypothetical version of AI possessing human-level intelligence, that will be able to critically think on behalf of human beings, implying that humans wouldn’t need to. I dread the implications of its possibilities.

Amidst all that is chaotic, if one were to ask me where to place my hope, I would place it in the world finding a way to remove the crutch from the new generation of language learners and reminding them that their legs work just as well. If communication is inevitable, so is language.

I hope we collectively remind ourselves, just in time, that love, care, and beauty will always reside in the details. To love is to learn. Often from our mistakes than from fleeting moments of perfection. It is in fact brave to make mistakes—far braver than seeking comfort in the ease of generating well-curated prompts.