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Written question asked by Bishop of St Albans (Bishops (affiliation)) on Wednesday, 1 May 2024, in the House of Lords. It was due for an answer on Thursday, 16 May 2024. It was answered by Baroness Barran (Conservative) on Thursday, 9 May 2024 on behalf of the Department for Education.

Artificial Intelligence: Languages

Question

To ask His Majesty's Government whether they have made an assessment of the impact of emerging artificial intelligence capacities on the necessity for foreign language learning.

Answer

Studying a language can be extremely rewarding and exciting for children and young people. It can provide insight into other cultures and open the door to travel and employment opportunities. Whilst Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be useful in enhancing the experience of learning a language, and this should be explored further, it should not be seen as a replacement.

The department wants to capitalise on the opportunities technology like AI presents for education, as well as addressing its risks and challenges. Responses to the call for evidence on generative AI in education highlighted the potential for this technology in generating language exercises and conversational prompts, for example. Language learning was one of the use cases tested as part of the department's Generative AI Hackathon project. The report of this project is due to be published shortly. The most important thing for a high-quality education is having a human expert teacher in the classroom. The emergence of this technology does not change that.

Secondary information

Type
Written question
Reference
HL4303
Session
2023-24
Subjects
Education Languages Artificial intelligence
Link
View this Written question on www.parliament.uk