Code Shapes Our Speech
Are Small Languages Threatened by AI and IoT?
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Icelandic linguists are concerned of the future of their language, as the software behind Internet of Things and smartphone apps are likely not to speak Icelandic. If households speak English to their fridges and mobiles, will smaller language groups survive in the long run?
ARE SMALL LANGUAGES THREATENED BY AI AND IOT?
First impacted by tourism and media, now by English used in smartphones and other devices, usage of Icelandic has dropped. It is now l less than 400.000 people who speak the language.
Two linguists interviewed by The Independent raise concerns about the impact of smartphones and Internet of Things devices such as robot fridges on children, who will be imposed to English rather than their mother tongue.
While text-based translation is taking rapid advances, the problem remains with computers recognising the myriad of spoken languages we speak. But what if languages and translation were to dissolve as a barrier? Vasco Pedro writes for TechCrunch: “Without language barriers, imagine how much more productive we could be, or how many people we could learn from or talk to that we previously couldn’t, or how much more successful global businesses could be — especially smaller companies that can’t afford a large staff of translators.”
The problem between language spoken by people and used by future AI algorithms runs deeper than the question of small language groups. Currently, software like Siri, Google or Cortana are quite disappointing in their ability to understand our spoken sentences. Natural Language Processing (NLP) is currently able to deal with single words but has difficulties with sentences.
All speakers of smaller languages, be it Finnish or Icelandic, or even Scottish English, have difficulties in making the machines understand what we say. A likely scenario is that next-level AI will understand common dialects of English, Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese and Spanish. The rest of us, instead, will have to wait.
There may be a need for national language and computing centres, and serious investments, to keep AI NLP up to date with your mother tongue. Especially in workplaces, AI will assist working with robots and they will not speak Swedish.
During the second world war, Navaho Native Americans took part in the war effort providing a better cypher than any mathematic formula could provide to English. Only in a dark Science Fiction film scenario could we imagine a future, where we may be saved by AI not understanding what we say.
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