WEBINAR ANNOUNCEMENT
TITLE: Has Artificial Intelligence Rendered Language Learning and Teaching Obsolete?
DATE: July 09, 2024
TIME: 4:00–4:30 p.m. EDT
DETAILS:
From the beginning of the first wave of AI, dating back to speech technologies in the early 2000s, there has always been a keen interest in how technologies might be harnessed to facilitate language learning and teaching. Now, almost a quarter century later, there are a number of possible directions language learning and teaching might take as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and recent technological advances.
AI technologies were originally aimed at developing machines that can use language and “think” abstractly. In this webinar, we look at the potential existential threat AI poses to language teaching and the need to learn a language in the first place. This existential threat sits alongside a decline in language learning opportunities across the English-speaking world.
It is critical that language educators have a more in-depth understanding of what AI is and how it works, in order to fully appreciate the extent to which AI can (or cannot!) replace language teachers and the need to learn a foreign language. We’ll explore what AI is, the range of AI technologies that might be deployed in language teaching, and how those technologies work – and whether AI might really ever replace language teachers.
