Why learn a language in a world of AI?

Why learn languages when we’ve now got AIs that can translate anything?

On the surface, it sounds logical. Learning a language is an enormous amount of work, while machine translations are instantaneous. Getting to that level would take years of work. Language learning might swiftly become a redundant skill, and the mountains of language learning apps and courses should be a dying industry, now that we’ve got a better alternative.

The reality is the exact opposite. Language learning is more popular than ever before, and AI is only going to accelerate that change.

How so? Let me tell you.

What’s new?

This question is probably the second most common one I get when I tell people I’m fluent in four languages (the most common being “how do you learn?”). With all the hype around AI, it’s important to remember Google translate has been good enough for the purpose of making yourself understood when necessary for over a decade. True, ChatGPT has more capability, but the point is that effective machine translation is not new.

Yet at the same time language learning is more popular than ever, and only getting more popular.

Still, you could argue we’re all wasting our time.

But if AI translation was going to undermine the usefulness of language learning, shouldn’t we have already started to see the effect by now?

Let’s take a look at Duolingo’s stats.

I guess 41 million daily active Duolingo users missed the memo. How embarrassing. Source: Duolingo

It really doesn’t look like language learning is going away.

Well, maybe machine translation is just not good enough yet? All we need is the little earpiece tech, just around the corner, that listens to everything and translates when necessary.

Unfortunately, it’s still not going to do the trick.

Machine translation will never be good enough

One of the most common reasons to learn a language is for economic opportunities. Usually, that language is English.

Answer me this, would you want to work with someone where every interaction was mediated by an AI translator? Would you want to manage such a person? Would you want to to be sold to by someone using AI translation?

I wouldn’t, and I think most would agree with me.

For those not learning for economic reasons, the reasons are diverse, but the common theme is connection — people want to make new friends, connect with another culture, speak with their spouse’s family, etc.

Can you imagine maintaining a deep connection with someone while having to pause for an AI to finish translating everything you say? Can you imagine having a heart-to-heart conversation where each of your words is heard, processed, and filtered by a computer chip? Would the lyrics of your favourite song have the same meaning when translated? On a practical level, can you imagine using such a technology in a noisy bar?

No matter why you are learning, the reasons are fundamentally human. We learn to connect, and machine translation breaks that connection.

Why learn a language in 2025?

In a world where common tasks will be increasingly completed by AI, skills that involve human connection and inspiration will be at a premium. The result is there are all the more reasons to nurture skills that enhance that connection. Skills such as public speaking, storytelling, communication, sales, content creation, entrepreneurship, and, of course, languages.

Even in this world, language learning still has plenty to offer:

• Make new connections with people
• Experience a culture more deeply than you could otherwise
• Travel more easily in places where your taret language is spoken
• Learn more about the world and the people that inhabit it
• Gain a valuable workplace skill
• Transfer information without relying on an intermediary

Does the existence of AI translation undermine any of these for you?

AI can boost your language learning

This is not an anti-AI post. AI has huge potential as a source of information, correction and practice. While I wouldn’t advise you take anything an AI says at face value, AI can still be a useful conversation partner for larger languages.

There’s a huge world out there, and machine translation has been an incredible boon for humanity. None of that undermines the reasons we as humans learn languages.

Think you might be ready to give learning a language a try? Check out my free guide and my newsletter.