No man. It’s great for utility like traveling through a country and being able to ask people things or get something done. But it doesn’t foster real connections nearly as well. People will be far less likely to befriend you if you have to awkwardly talk through a translator all the time.

That’s also kind of why I’m against a global language replacing all others

That’s handy, because the whole promise of the AI babel fish is that we finally won’t need an imperialist global language.

IMO you’ve got this entirely the wrong way round.

Language is not just about getting your idea across. It shapes how we think.

But to answer your question, if you speak English, no.

There is so much more to knowing a language than literal translation.
You’ll never understand memes using machine translation. Even if AI can do something like “explain why this image is funny”, it just doesn’t hit the same.

Learning a language develops your brain in very weird ways, like nothing else can. There is some research which showed that bilingual or higher people had higher intelligence in general.

It can be done for self improvement and fun too.

I would say you answered yourself, it will take years before AI is good enough as a reliable real-time translation.

And the current LLMs have a tendency to hallucinate combine that with mistranslations and lack of the nuances you mention.

When I think of LLM hallucinations this Monty Python skit comes into mind:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=grA5XmBRC6g

This is a weird take. It seems to argue against not learning a language because of AI, but… also to not have any data that AI will lower the interest in learning languages?

Look, I have enough experience with monolinguals to tell you the arguments they were using were already bullshit. And we had more than decent machine translation before LLMs. If anything LLM translations, particularly running locally, are slower and less reliable than older alternatives.

Let’s stop giving the tech more credit than it deserves until it proves itself, hm?

Also, most of that “language defines thinking” stuff is debunked pseudoscience. Learn a language to gain a new skill and open up a new culture without filters, but stop it with the exoticising nonsense.

I learned languages for the same reason I learn most things: mere curiosity and the self satisfaction of improvement. I moved to France cause I knew French and I married a Brit cause I speak English, so if anything languages make things interesting. If you don’t learn things simply because learning is fun and it’s better to put something of value in your brain than nonsense then, idk, shame on you?

Maybe in the future you could have an AI implant to take care of all translations while you’re talking to people, and this idea has been explored in scifi many times. I think the babel fish was the funniest way to implement this idea in a story.

If that sort of translator becomes widespread, it would definitely change the status learning languages has. That would also mean you have to think about a potential man in the middle attack. Can you trust the corporation that runs the AI? What if you want to have a discussion about a topic that isn’t approved by your local tyrannical dictatorship? MITM attack can become a serious concern. Most people probably don’t care that much, so they won’t learn new languages, but some people really need to.

Personally, I think it’s a great social experience. Once you move past the “I’m going to speak imperfectly until I learn,” thing, you basically get to babel like a baby as an adult. People seem to love it, too. Everytime I tell someone I’m learning a language and they speak that language, they’re always excited to help me practice.

I think it helps with your primary language too. A lot of languages are related, so learning about the structure of one can help you recognize patterns in another. Since you learn about new grammar rules in your native language first, it’s especially useful if it’s been a while since you’ve taken an English class.

Nope, I can tell you after 4 years in South Korea without speaking the language, the LLMs help to navigate websites and your phone a bit. But that’s it. If you go to the bank or convenience store or if someone calls you you’re still fucked.

Learning stuff will never not be useful. All the ai tools in the world will not change that fact.

I appreciate the implied optimism on the future state of the world.

the opposite! ai is great for helping learn a language, part of my goal is to get away from english and us centric everything, if i just continue to watch other cultures in english i’m not doing anything really except watch more english language content

I am an ESL teacher. Generative AI is making things complicated for us, but it cannot replace learning the language. Right now, things like ChatGPT are presented as some sort of solution, but it is so far off and sometimes too obvious.

Like you mentioned, you think and reason differently in different languages. Plus, some people just love learning languages.

Aside: I am of the opinion that OpenAI and ChatGPT will disappear within 2 to 3 years. Their investors will abandon them leaving them drowning in debt, Sam Altman will face the same fate as Elizabeth Holmes. At some point his grift of asking for more money, hardware, electricity, water, etc., will be revealed.