AI Is Changing The Way We Use Language

AI is changing language sounds in pronunciation, word choice and delivery in an attempt to make speech frictionless and efficient. Pausing and intonation are aspects to speech that aren’t often considered, but to an experienced public speaker, these are elements that make up a polished delivery. Experienced speakers know that time is your friend, not your enemy. Inexperienced speakers get nervous during pausing and “negative space” while addressing a crowd. They perceive it as weakness or incompetence. They feel the need to fill every space with language, utterances or their vocal speed while talking. They have a perception that talking fast is the way to sound native. Often, students make pronunciations that sound close enough to native speech, but because they are taking too fast, the slight imperfections in their accent require more processing time for listeners. Simply slowing their speech eliminates this buffer load for listeners.    

Language is art. Some speak, some write. Not every good speaker can write well; not every writer can speak well. Speaking and writing are two different animals that meet somewhere in the middle when we convey meaning. Listening to an AI speaker or reading an AI post is like the difference between holding a mass produced manufactured pot, or holding a handmade pot thrown on a wheel. The beauty lies in the imperfections, what the Japanese call wabi-sabi, nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect.

AI posts are the result of (and cater to) algorithms, which eliminate outliers. AI speech is for the AI machine, not for the human listener. Our speech patterns are as personally identifiable as our finger prints. We need to teach these characteristics to our students. How a learner uses language has as much to do with “correct” usage as it does with that student’s personal style. It is difficult for me as a teacher to not impose my style of speech on a student.

And now we have the imposition of AI style to contend with.