00:11
Hello, Len!
Hello, Asami!
How goes?
What's up? What's up?
It rained a lot in Hong Kong, that's about it.
It's Easter break right now.
So, I have a 5-day weekend.
Which I really should have utilized for somethingelse.
But instead, I mentally felt like I booked aholiday.
Because I bought the ticket for my holiday inJune.
So, the act of purchasing the flight alone gave methe holiday feels.
I'm an easy person to please.
Don't actually even have to go to the holiday tofeel the holiday vibes.
I mean, you still have to pay for it, though.
So, I mean, there is a...
Yeah, it should hurt me.
But for some reason, you know,
It just got my head working in a very convenientway for my serotonin, I guess.
Yeah.
Well, that's pretty normal, isn't it?
What is it?
I don't know. Can you be delusionally positive?
Well, I don't think it's delusional.
It's definitely in the same vein of human andanimal training, right?
Oh, like buying stuff is like dopamine triggering?
Yeah, yeah.
It's because at some point, you no longer need thething to trigger the dopamine.
It sort of runs ahead of the actual action, right?
So, and I don't...
This is not just like, what is it, Pavlov's dog,right?
It's not that, but I think it sort of is, right?
It kind of is, right?
Because it's like conditioning, right?
Right, exactly.
So with like, you know, food or gifts or vacations, right?
Or like, you know that something's coming up.
There's something in the anticipation or theprevious trigger that makes you go,
Ah, suddenly I'm happy because of this thing.
It's the same with probably less happy versions ofthis, right?
In terms of something that has given you greatanxiety or otherwise.
So, yeah, it's normal, but you still haven't goneon a trip.
It's good to remind yourself of that.
Yeah, I'm not actually utilizing this five-dayweekend,
which next year, now that I'm becoming familiarwith this country's holiday codes,
I shall think of something to do.
It is fascinating that they follow Easter as aholiday.
It's not something I've celebrated for severalyears.
Not only that, they combine this.
03:00
Well, I don't know if they combine it or if itjust happens to land on the same weekend.
But it's also a traditional Buddhist calendarholiday of like ancestral grave sweeping day.
You know, you gotta go visit your ancestors andsay hi to them.
Or if you have a big graveyard, then clean themand whatnot.
That's like a thing that you're supposed to doalso on this weekend.
A lot of grave activity happening this weekend.
Both in biblical terms and non-biblical terms alsoapparently.
So the temples are busy, the churches are busy,and I'm just chilling.
It's like tourist season for spiritualists.
Why did you say that?
Anyway, I wanted to share this little tweet that Ifound on our official Twitter.
e-i-g-o-d-e-s-c-i-e-n-c-e-a-go-the-science
which is very rarely updated, but I do see everytime we publish a new episode.
Anyway, this random tweet that came along
basically thought it was interesting enough for usas lovers of all things discussing about AI.
It's not lovers of AI, but love the discussionsurrounding it.
I love the discussion because you shouldn't runaway from a good intellectual and or emotionaldiscussion
when it can benefit you, yourself, society, etc.
But anyway, so this tweet, basically I'm going tosummarize, translate in my head.
Basically was talking about how now with AI, there's a lot of simultaneous interpretation type toolshappening.
Whether it's through closed captions or audio orany other modes of translations.
And then more of that coming out, more of thatbecomes really good at the delay times andeverything.
So it's very almost naturalistic, like real-timetools.
With that, there's two camps of people is whatthey're saying.
Camp one is people who are like, well, now that wehave all these tools, we don't have to studyEnglish, thank God.
And then the camp two is, oh shit, we better studyEnglish.
And they study English even harder.
And the poster, the OP of this post is of the camptwo side.
So he is now even more than before, sort of likepressure to study English.
And yeah, that was interesting.
06:02
Definitely true about this kind of like reactionto these type of translation tools.
Do you observe this trend of splitting into twocamps around you?
So yeah, when you shared this with me, and I mean,there are probably many others who post this.
I'm not sure. Shall we give credit to who postedthis?
Yeah, he's Ken Susan. He's kind of internet famousperson that I think, yes.
Doesn't need our credit.
Yeah, exactly. He doesn't need our credit.
OK, but what I wanted to get to with this is maybetwo things.
One, I have seen the shift to say camp one.
This is just because of the order it wasintroduced in the tweet.
So camp one, great. I don't have to study Englishanymore.
Thank you.
Which is fine.
And is a response, especially.
I think I saw this even, you know, I see it inmaybe different moments throughout, you know,academic stuff and social stuff and so on.
But Apple, maybe what was it last year?
Producing, you know, the marketing and stage demoof their headphones doing live translation
like into their glasses so that you could talkback and forth to somebody in a differentlanguage.
It might have been Farsi and I'm not sure what theother language was.
I'm not even sure if Farsi was right, but theytried to show this right to demonstrate it.
And there was a notable delay.
But it also was pretty interesting and way betterthan we had seen before.
I don't know this demo, but I believe you.
It was a while ago. I think it was last year.
I had a colleague who actually included it as partof a little workshop that he did for thedepartment.
Because he was talking about kind of this essenceof, you know, if we teach communication basedclasses in English.
But in the business space, people are just buying,you know, Apple AirPods and, you know,
going to meetings and if everybody has them,nobody has to know the other language.
You can just communicate in your own and kind ofkeep going from there.
This was what he wanted us to kind of think about.
Because in that situation, if this tech is widelyavailable, if it is very quick,
which I think maybe the other related post herewas something like a book about point two secondlanguage conversation.
I didn't get to see the whole.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
09:02
I want to read that book too.
What's kind of the I'm sort of getting the premisefrom the title, but I didn't look it up.
So he focused on how it's sort of like a pop linguistics book.
It only takes point two seconds for two peopleconversing to take turns.
And what happens in that point two seconds?
How do we know this is our turn to speak or how torespond?
That all sort of like processing happens in pointtwo seconds.
And he really like zoned in on that to study.
Like what about like what does linguistics haveanswers to this insane mental cognitive gymnasticsthat we do every day conversing?
OK, all right.
That makes I mean, we do it all the time, right?
We do it all the time, even with the Zoom delay.
That is an even more magical thing that certainlyis harder as a result.
But OK, that sounds super interesting.
This is also something that I want to keep inmind.
If it's only in Japanese, I might have troublewith that.
But it'd be curious to see because there arelinguistic studies that I'm involved with.
And I have colleagues that are much deeper inapplied linguistics and stuff.
So but in that framing, so point two seconds ofexchange between people, for instance.
Right.
That's going to change a lot depending on how reliant somebody is on the tech and the way that thedelay with the tech might be.
Right.
That would be a whole new set of interactions toplay with.
Anyway.
So camp one, definitely have heard people talkabout it, have had people present like that.
Camp two, I've got maybe conjectures as to who orwhy someone might be saying that.
The idea of, you know, if I don't study English, I'm in serious trouble.
But what do you think or what have you heard isthe reasoning behind that?
Have you heard this elsewhere?
Well, so I think the reasoning that I think Ken Su-san, does he say that in his response?
No.
I think it's more just like the awareness that ifhe relies on AI for English, he's not going to beable to catch a mistake.
The AI translation is going to surpass his levelof English to the point where it's like no longer.
He cannot have a full control over his owncommunications.
Right.
It's a full reliance on the tool or.
12:01
Right.
And then at least if he has some command of thelanguage, then he's able to edit it or he's ableto point out if something does go wrong or if it'snot how he intended to sound like.
Like these kind of nuanced communication.
I think that's what he's referring to.
Or maybe I don't know.
I'm kind of inferring a lot because he doesn'texplicitly say.
Sure.
Yeah, I was.
Why he is studying English or he feels pressure tostudy English even more.
But I think I think that's a general kind ofconcern, like people thinking that it's going tobe out of control very quickly.
Got it.
So that's I.
Yeah.
Either his what you thought his reasoning might beor in general, if you felt there were other likesort of reasons behind sort of camp two here,because I.
I guess my first thought was, you know, whoa, if Idon't study English, I'm in serious trouble beinga.
Maybe an expectation that, you know, because I isso English heavy and it's sort of proficiency,right?
That's another possibility.
OK.
Basically, I'm asking this because for the secondone, I don't know if I've heard this response to Ias often the way you framed it as.
I'll lose a sense of control or the ability toedit and engage.
I think that's one I have heard before.
I think there's an interesting discussion there.
But yeah, I think your second point is also truebecause I did the sort of training material for AIis so skewed towards English language.
A fear that you might not be able to take fulladvantage of the AI revolution for the lack of abetter word.
You know, if you stay outside of this Englishlanguage sphere, that that might be also implied.
I cannot tell based on the original post.
Yeah, plausible concerns.
I guess it opens up these questions.
I think one of the questions it opens up is withan AI.
I'm pausing because there is a large sort ofumbrella term usage of AI happening in thisconversation.
But it is mostly about a tool that is trained withmachine learning, deep learning, right?
To handle conversion of language and meaning,associated meaning.
15:05
What the computer then has to make decisions on,essentially.
Automated meaning.
And those particular tools, whether it be inwriting or speaking situations.
You know, what does that mean for the person?
Is it now important that I understand the languageso that I can be more in control, as you weresaying?
Or have more agency over the output?
Yeah, like a mindful user of this tool, yeah.
And that's a question of the tool or of theoutput, right?
I guess you could become more aware of how thetool works to make decisions on when you put it inthere.
But then there's also the case of if everybody,the extremes of if everybody has the tool.
And the tool is, quote unquote, good enough tosimply make conversation happen between language.
You ask, what have we lost from not learning thelanguage ourselves?
And, you know, the first thoughts are control andagency over the way that it's trying to come out.
And then you might get arguments about, well,translation has always had this problem.
And it's a continuous ongoing struggle ofcommunication between humans.
And there is a, I think that was actually theother thing my colleague had brought up, which wasmaybe if or whether there is an inherent benefitto learning another language other than itscommunicative ability, right?
Like, do you gain something else in the process oflearning a language that is hard to get by proxy,right?
Or by doing it in a different way?
And so that might be another thing to think onthere.
OK, yeah.
But I don't know where we're trying to land thisconversation anymore, but...
I'm sure we can find a landing.
Hold on. Let's see. Let's see.
Well, currently there's somebody on the wholepodcast show doing an English learning experience,right?
Trying to travel elsewhere.
Right. Yeah. And I don't know, like, I...
I think everybody knows, like, which side of thecamp I sit in, which is definitely of the camp to,like, I better get better at English.
And I still do feel that way to this day, eventhough I sort of, you know, don't struggle withEnglish not on a regular basis.
Especially in a conversation setting anymore.
But with writing, reading, like, other modalities,it's, I think, just like any other, you know,English as a second language speaker in thatsense.
18:09
But I still just generally speaking, my way ofrelating to these AI...
I'm losing, like, a very broad term AI because Idon't think it's all AI here, but let's not be pedantic about it.
Anyway, I am of the person who don't want to trustblindly these tools.
If I'm using it, I want to know what goes inthere.
Even with the black box mechanism, I want to knowwhat is the purpose of black box there or sort oflike, you know, the design choices behind it.
And then decide how much to rely on under whatcircumstances and pick and choose how to use thistool that is now newly available to me.
But on your earlier question about whether there'sinherent sort of benefit in struggling through tolearn a new language.
I think it's just good. It's good for, like, I'mannoyed that I don't have any studies that I canpull out right now off the top of my head.
But I think there's a lot of, at least my benefit,like, my world has expanded significantly becauseI can speak English and read and write in Englishin a reasonable way.
But also the experience of struggling to learn anew language.
That's something that I can resonate with manypeople of otherwise people who have no commongrounds with me.
And I think I take that for granted sometimes nowthat I say it because I stopped struggling on adaily.
But the experience, the significant memory of mestruggling in the ages between like 14 through 18or something is how I can be more patient withother English as a second language speaker orother non-native speaker of any language trying tospeak a language that's not their own.
And maybe that's not a given. Maybe if you onlyever knew how to speak one language, thosethoughts or those kind of like level of empathydoesn't happen to you.
Oh, yeah. I mean, you mentioned, you know, havingsources or something.
Look, anybody, you're welcome to go and dive intothe language, you know, teaching literature if youwish.
It is a both broad and deep field.
But I think your experiential sharing in terms ofyou have gained the ability to connect indifferent ways, to maybe have empathy in differentways.
21:12
It gave you access maybe to the way of English.
English is not a culture, but the culturesassociated with English as a primary language, forinstance.
It's something you gain access to through thestruggle as much as you do the use of thelanguage.
But like aside from like sort of, you know,gaining a skill like, OK, English, tick, right?
I think the result can be the same with or withoutAI, right?
Like we can reach to the certain level of fluency,whether it's AI assisted or not in terms of like,you know, if it's like writing.
And I don't know what the skills are for the likea speaking, but like whatever.
But like my point, as you correctly understood,was that it's the whole experience of learning andacquiring skills that made me a richer person, Ithink.
You know, so I think I don't think I could.
I don't think AI will reach to the level ofrichness that I have achieved by struggling foryears.
So that's it.
But I also I think.
Yeah, like maybe this is really just kind ofpersonal, but like, don't you don't you want tohave a control over how you express yourself if it's possible at all for you to have control over?
Am I OCD?
No, no, I'm.
Listeners can't see this, right?
But I'm making a face that says, like, you know, Iam.
I am excited to respond.
And Len has like about two million thoughts thatlike rushed through just now and that's hisexpression.
And all of them hurt me because it's too manythoughts to have at once.
So this.
OK, I think two things I'm going to do.
One, I'm going to kind of reply and then two, Ithink I'm going to give us an option of roundingthis out for now.
So let's let's see if I can do it in that order.
OK, one.
Yes, I personally find this to be really not justimportant that we're able to act on theopportunities of.
Making decisions about how we are understood, howwe communicate our ideas, how we communicateourselves.
24:03
I think that us being aware of it.
Right.
Comes along with, say, the ability to introspect,the ability to consider how you might have meantsomething or if you were then meaning something inone way and realize that that didn't quite comeacross that way because of other context.
Right.
And that you might have misunderstood because ofbecause of a language barrier, because of adifference in language, because of a difference inthe associated cultures there.
Right.
I don't think that an automated tool replaces thefact that those struggles will exist.
And so.
Right.
You may have, though, as you kind of had notedthis, you know, you could maybe still go throughthe struggle of learning things with the A.I.'sexistence of the tool in that space.
There are tensions that will continue to exist,but those tensions, I think, will change overtime.
And maybe the hope I have is that we hold on tothe valuable humanness between any of thoseinteractions, even if there is an automated toolthat people just start to use a whole bunch.
Which brings me to point two, which is that thepeople who are using the tools that have beendesigned by some other system and then deliveredinto spaces play a pretty big role in how thosetools actually get used.
Yes.
And how they actually impact the rest of society.
And so that, I think, is a whole otherconversation we can have.
That sounds like our kagakukei podcast episode.
That is exactly what I think it sounds like.
All right. Yeah. Yeah.
So maybe that's where we land our conversation.
And this is just like a teaser into our full-fledged conversation.
Spontaneous teaser.
Thank you for sharing the tweet and stuff earlier.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
We'll see. All right.
So shall we forcibly get on with our next episodethen?
I think that was pretty smooth. That wasn't forcedat all.
Okay, now it's forcibly like that.
All right.
All right.
All right.
That's it for the show today.
Thanks for listening and find us on X at Eigo deScience.
That is E-I-G-O-D-E-S-C-I-E-N-C-E.
See you next time.
