What AI earbuds can’t replace: The value of learning another language

YOUR HOST in Osaka, Japan, slips on a pair of headphones and suddenly hears your words transformed into flawless Kansai Japanese. Even better, their reply in their native tongue comes through perfectly clear to you.

- GABRIEL GUILLEN AND THOR SAWIN

Thanks to artificial intelligence (AI), neither of you is lost in translation. What once seemed like science fiction is now marketed as a quick fix for cross-cultural communication.

Such Al-powered tools will be useful for many people, especially for tourists or in any purely transactional situation, even if seamless automatic interpretation remains at an experimental stage.

Does this mean the process of learning another language will soon be a thing of the past?

As scholars of computer-assisted language learning and linguistics, we disagree and see language learning as vital in other ways. We have devoted our careers to this field because we deeply believe in the lasting and transformative value of learning and speaking languages beyond one’s mother tongue.

LESSONS FROM PAST LANGUAGE ‘DISRUPTIONS’

This isn’t the first time a new technology has promised massive disruption to learning languages.

In recent years, language learning startups such as Duolingo aimed to make acquiring a language easier than ever, in part by gamifying language. While these apps have certainly made learning more accessible to more people, our research shows most platforms and apps have failed to fully replicate the inherently social process of learning a language.

One thing’s clear: The massive popularity of language apps shows there’s still strong demand for language learning, despite a sharp decline in formal education settings. Duolingo alone had 113.1 million monthly active users around the world at the end of 2024, a 36% increase over the prior year. This is about 10 times more than the number of students who take languages other than English in US schools.

THE MEANING OF LEARNING A LANGUAGE

Numbers aside, the gold standard of language learning is the ability to follow and contribute to a live group conversation.