2023 Events in Review

Hiroshima JALT July 2023 Monthly Meeting - Face-to-face

DATE: Saturday, 1st July 2023, 6-7:30pm

PLACE: Eikei University of Hiroshima, 4th floor

TOPIC: Feeding the Dragon: Is the Rise of Generative AI the Demise of Humanity?

COST: Free for JALT members and students; 500 yen for all others

SPEAKER: Prof. Keith Barrs (Shudo University)

As generative AI software becomes embedded in everyday productivity tools such as Microsoft Office’s Copilot and Google Workspace’s Duet, we are at a critical point in terms of the potential consequences of this technology. On the one hand, generative AI is a blessing: it can not only automate our everyday mundane digital tasks, such as replying to emails and writing up meeting notes, but can also create new content from scratch, such as project brainstorms, presentation slide decks, and semester syllabi. On the other hand, we can view generative AI as detracting from the creativity and uniqueness of human output. There is mounting concern over the authenticity of the digital content it produces, the potential for biased or discriminatory language due to the data on which it is trained, and the reliability of the answers it confidently gives in response to user prompts. And then there is the doomsday view, increasingly held by many AI experts, that the early release of generative AI to the general public has been a fatal error of judgment and has initiated our own demise. Indeed, through our naive and self-centered interactions with generative AI are we "feeding the dragon" that is about to attack us? This session will begin with a demonstration of a range of generative AI tools that are now available. Participants will then try out some of these - so be prepared to bring a laptop or share one, and possibly to register as a user of one or more of the tools. This will be followed by a managed discussion of the ethical or even existential issues raised by the existence of and easy access to generative AI.

Bio: Keith Barrs works in the Department of English at Hiroshima Shudo University. His main academic interests are in the fields of linguistic landscape research and corpus linguistics studies, in particular investigating the borrowing and assimilation of English loanwords into the Japanese language. More recently he also become interested in the impact of AI technologies, not only on the field of language education but also more generally on the survival of the human species as a whole.