Why I don't fear AI as an online language teacher

Despite all the panic in the newspapers and amongst fellow recent graduates, I am hardly concerned that AI will steal my students or destroy my job prospects. Apparently, my “useless” field of study - Classics - which everyone said would doom me to a lifetime of working at Starbucks is a safer choice than the computer science degree everyone said I, a supposedly “smart person,” should get. The large chatbots are just not good at Latin. They have no souls and thus no taste, something that matters when you are choosing readings for a seminar. They can’t give a lecture about Cicero’s philosophical writings and being human, since they are not human. They don’t have the real life experiences and context to find something personal and meaningful in literature.

What do students want? If you ask me, human interaction, ideally in person, with someone who has read tons of Latin and has quirky, personal opinions on various authors. These opinions are formed by reading extraordinary amounts of Latin from all periods and thinking about them, as well as by reflecting on how they do (or don’t) relate to my own life. Thank goodness I did that instead of looking for a shortcut, a trick to pass exams, as so many people do at university. Students want personality. They want to practice discussing texts with someone competent and funny who can correct them in a polite, pleasant way that feels caring not aggressive. If they just wanted to be fed facts on a subject, they can read a book or, if they really wish, ask a chatbot, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

At least two of my current private students use AI in their private study - I’m not sure which, but I think they are using chatbots. The AI makes mistakes, of course, as do I, and they are both intelligent enough to know that. I give them links to public domain grammar books they can use to check the AI’s claims. Both seem to prefer to use AI along with a human teacher, suggesting that my above assessment - that human teachers offer something subjective, relatable, and human that AI can’t - is correct. However, I also had a student who would type every question he asked me into ChatGTP simultaneously and ignore my response. He was taking Latin largely because it was required for his degree program, not because he wanted to learn. He would also use AI to complete his assignments. I found all of this frustrating in a student, but I also understood that a lifetime of being taught solely for the purpose of passing exams had led him to become an unserious student prone to cheating. Before AI he found other ways to cheat - chatbots had only given him a newer, cheaper path to passing grades with minimal effort. There have always been people like that, but, happily, they tend not to take “difficult” subjects like Latin, unless forced somehow. So I am not so concerned by them nor do I think AI itself is the root cause of such behavior.

Also, as far as I know, no existing AI chatbot can write Latin well and with true eloquence. I’m not sure if any computer can write great prose even in an easier or more widely-used language, like English, even if it did eat all the Nabokov and Shakespeare on the internet. It seems they are not yet a good source of conversational practice for Latin and the translations or glosses they give my students are often just plain wrong. However, I strongly suspect that, even if their Latin proficiency vastly improves, there will still be a sufficiency of students who seek real human interaction, either in weekend conventicula or in Zoom classes. Indeed, the studia humanitatis ac litterarum will probably only become more popular as we grapple with the effects of AI on society and the IT jobs a generation was pressured into studying for become a less sure path to stability. Hopefully, as this changes, there will also be more students studying whatever it is they choose to study because they love the subject and wish to be challenged, instead of “because mom said a degree in ___ would help me become rich", once we realize that the purpose of school cannot and probably should not be “to get a well-paying job” - nobody is going to be financially well-off because of Latin, but they will be enriched culturally and philosophically, and that is even more valuable, if you ask me. Seriously studying ancient texts is something a human being can do - indeed, perhaps, only a human being can actually enjoy and admire beautiful poetry and enthralling speeches. As human beings, not money- and status-obsessed robots, we should cultivate these studies.