Will AI ever replace the need to learn a language?

Artificial Intelligence, or AI, has become a part of our families in a way. We have our personal assistants like Siri, our fridges tell us when we need restocking, and with the click of a button our heating can turn itself on before we even reach home. AI is even, in some ways, helping us speak other languages. But will AI ever replace our need for learning languages?

Before AI we had phrasebooks, and even electronic dictionaries to translate individual words. These evolved into electronic phrasebooks, making ordering food and drink abroad easier. Then the likes of Google Translate came along to make our translation even easier still. If you have the app on your phone you can even have it 'talk' to your bartender, bookstore worker, and so on, so you don't even have to try.

Now, we have a range of apps and gadgets offering 'instant translation' where you can speak in one language and have it immediately translated into another. The typical languages you will find these translations in are things like English, French, German, Mandarin, and Spanish, though some devices offer far more, with some even boasting 98 percent accuracy! You can even now Skype with instant translation, where your voice and text conversations can be instantly translated into more than 60 languages.

So what's the catch? If all these AI powered devices and technologies using the latest in machine learning are translating for us, why do we need to bother learning languages ourselves? Well, for a number of reasons. Where is the satisfaction in having a machine do something for us? How natural does a conversation really feel, if there is a 'middle man' of a device between us? But more than anything, a machine cannot perfectly mimic a human speaking a language.

Think about it. Not only do we use a range of colloquialisms, we also have personal words we use for objects that won't mean the same to everyone. Think about your TV remote control; is it a didge, zapper, or ujamawotsit for you? These are made up words; how can an AI translator cope? A machine cannot, as yet, understand the nuances of sarcasm, lying, and all sorts of other human ways. And an AI-powered translation device will never quite get how we use body language to emphasise our words!

If we also consider that there will be words and phrases that are offensive in some cultures that aren't in others, and that these will be harder for AI to understand, it is safe to say that AI translation tools will not make the need to learn languages obsolete. It is just a handy tool to help us get even better at the languages we choose to learn!