Can AI replace conversation with a real person

Can AI language learning effectively replace the benefits of English conversation with a real person?

At MyDialogue, we place humans at the heart of our app and believe that there are shortcomings with robot-based learning. Below are a some examples.

1. Language is constantly being renewed and reinvented. Every year, new words are incorporated into the dictionary. Large language models which require huge resources to train can only reproduce what is has been fed and consequently, lags behind spontaneous new language trends.

   
   

2. Intonation  can change the way language is interpreted. A statement can be interpreted as a question if the pitch increases, and sarcasm is often only understood in the context of the tone of voice. These are more easily detectable and used by a human.

   
   

3. Facial expressions are also crucial when having a conversation as a response is dependent on how the previous statement is perceived. Unless the AI language program can re-produce this, conversational subtleties will be lost.

   
   

4. But perhaps most importantly, conversation should be natural, full of surprises, and not based on the statistical probability of the next word occurring.

At MyDialogue, we emphasise the human connections that come from finding the right language partners. This makes learning even more engaging and motivating as you are learning a language while having conversations with friends. This is not available with an LLM. (Although recent news stories have emerged about people developing attachments with conversational robots, these are considered unhealthy and unadvised! )