How Popular Culture Affects Learning Foreign Language via AI, A Posthuman
The future of society is at a constant prediction due to the effects of technology on human beings and social change. John Fiske, a philosophical scholar was of the view that technological might in the future be used to create totalitarian regimes that enclaved people into cultural and geographical prisons. These views were however skeptical as seen in his book “Media Matters:Everyday Culture and Political Change” where he anticipated photocopiers would make it challenging to implement copyright laws despite the socially acceptable and rampant reproduction of music and television programs during his career (Fiske 134). These sentiments were inspired by popular culture in the period and seemed to have negligible regard to technology. His views were widely criticized as there was a clear and sharp contrast between the interests and preferences held by ordinary people. The disinterest in technology as a non-human agent and overemphasis of subjective humanism contrasted the popular culture during his era.
POSTHUMANISM
Most classical and modern philosophies have crafted a model of philosophy based on the classic division of the self, body, and mind, organic and technological, nature, and society. These including rationalism, stoicism, Marxism, and relativism revolve around humanism and centered human beings on technological, ecological, and evolutionary coordinates. These philosophies were critiqued on various fronts one of them being the position of human beings as an intelligent animal. Posthumanism, a broad field of thought arose around the mid-1960s as a contemporary discourse among philosophers and centered on what is really means to be human and the concept of “man” has changed over time.
Posthumanism provides human beings with questions on the concepts of human beings over time as well as why human beings make sense of themselves and the separation from other species. The intricate thoughts about existence are dissected from both interior and exterior worlds. Among the dynamics of Posthumanism is the role of language and cognition in the understanding of the universe. According to Wolfe (212), Posthumanism addresses all forms of existence as whole units and does not perceive any epistemological, spatial, or ontological separations that set boundaries between a human being with other non-human forms of existence. In Pennycook (2), the lack of distinct divisions between societies, nature, human and non-human places an important concern over language and cognition as human fields that are central to linguistics. These attributes are properties that characterized humanity as they are distributed across artifacts, places, and people.
POPULAR CULTURE
In today’s world, popular culture pervades every aspect of human life and affects how people understand, react to the world, what they believe, what they practice, and make for themselves (Szeman and O’Brien 18). Technology has been evidently embedded into everyday life with a huge impact across social, cultural, and educational spheres. The use of technology has become popular and almost inevitable in almost every sphere of modern life. The demand, consumption, and development of technology has evolved into a subculture with popular culture among consumers having a great impact on society. According to Fink (12), success, demand, and motivation for certain technology have been influenced by popular culture in the 21st Century. The relationship between technology and popular culture is fairly symbiotic.
TECHNOLOGY, SOCIETY AND POPULAR CULTURE
According to Cohen (275), there exist superficial links between popular culture and technology with technology argued to be deeply enmeshed in the social, economic, and cultural spheres of society. Sociologists have also argued on society and technology with the latter being shaped by the former. When conceptualized as an object, a process, or a form of knowledge, technology is influenced by the needs of society. It can therefore not exist on itself in a neutral or natural state. Progressively, the meaning of technology is tied to the society in which its use is most popular and cannot be separated from the cultural meaning-making.
On Poshumanism, technology is utilized as a non-humanistic and objective an anthropological premise. As highlighted by Colombetti (364), Posthumanism explores technology as a non-subjective approach to transcendence and growth of humanity. Rather than assessing technology as the utility of technology to human beings for usage, Poshumanism addresses it as an autonomous tool with the potential of acquiring complete ubiquity and surpassing human control. Following this line of thought, artificial intelligence might be an adoption of rational instrumentation but might eventually develop and end up imposing ubiquitous computational logic on human beings. The posthuman approach to technology is therefore aligned towards non-human identification and conceptualization of technology.
According to Kirkpatrick (132), individuals who are not technical savvy encounter technological objects after they have been codified and set out experience to the technology. This is how individuals understand the technology and respond appropriately. The demand and response toe technology is therefore influenced by social codes and culture that affect both individual orientation and society as a whole. In a nutshell, technology and popular culture intersect with each other with each being created and shaped by society. Another important factor in the relationship between technology and popular culture is capitalism. As highlighted by Bauman (120), human beings have increasingly aligned themselves along with consumption which subsequently generated perceived uniqueness and individuality. The consumption of innovative technologies is therefore closely intersects with the popular culture among the majority. As in the exampled used by Matthewman (338), the popularity of automobiles was rapid due to the conception of technology as not only a faster means of transport but also a significant symbol of industrialization and modernization. As noted by Urry (26), the popular culture during the 20th-century car system was influenced by the notion of good life and self-expansion. Owning a car became a popular culture during this era and associated with leisure and pleasure. The car became a single dominant consumable that also influenced the human diet and the music people listened to. Apart from being an artifact of popular culture, it also developed a deep culture in society with a depiction of status (Fiske 115). Technology, therefore, is closely symbiotic with popular culture in society with technological artifacts being of significant importance in the framing of society.
POPULAR CULTURE AND LEARNING FOREIGN LANGUAGE
Learning a foreign language is a major concern in education systems across the world with teachers only left with reading and writing exercises as the fundamental teaching approach François and Fairon (1). These tools are sometimes ineffective due to differences in the level of students and complexities in the material. Teachers face challenges in meeting the demands of students due to the rigidity of leveled textbooks and other materials prescribed in the curriculum. The use of artificial intelligence to mimic human behavior has been instrumental in the breakthrough in learning languages.
A key challenge in the use of leveled literature is readability formulas and approaches to correct errors during foreign language acquisition processes. These formulas are prepared for teachers to customize texts to be used by students as well as correcting errors made by students taking a foreign language class. The controversy over the approaches to address these challenges has been present with one faction made up of cognitive theorists arguing that for the attention to a feature of a language and paying attention to errors (Schmidt 214; Doughty 87). Nativists on the other hand have argued against the attention to errors as they are helpful and learning a foreign language can take place without error correction. Evidence has however proven that attention to the features of a language and addressing errors systematically conducive in the process of learning a foreign language.
The diffusion of popular culture into the use of artificial intelligence in education and particularly in the learning of a foreign language is inevitable due to the increasing need for automation across major social and economic processes. The process of foreign language acquisition is an underestimated and intricate activity in the life of an individual. Learning a foreign language in addition to the first one is analyzed using the Communicative Language Teaching theory by Shakouri and Shokouhi (221) who identified competency in using a language as the knowledge and ability to communicate in a target language. The process of learning a foreign language requires learners to acquire the ability to use the language in a meaningful manner Genesee (78).
The use of popular culture in teaching English to non-speakers is not a completely alien concept. Research on the use of popular culture began in the late 20th century and has been used in positive roles in teaching English as a foreign language. According to Liu and Lin (87), the use of popular cultural resources has been effective in foreign classes to teach learners to expand their vocabulary and proficiency incomprehension. The use of popular culture including technologies has been essential in improving the learning process of Hong Kong students in learning English.
POPULAR CULTURE, LEARNING FOREIGN LANGUAGE AND AI
According to Tuomi (5), every action by a human being is based on the anticipation of the future. Though we cannot effectively predict the future, current knowledge, and past experiences can be used in the imagination realization of the future. In creating the future, comprehension of the future and the past is crucial in the appreciation of future possibilities and opportunities. Just like the development of the telegraph and the subsequent revolution in communication, intelligence offers advanced solutions through the use of computing technology to aid in static processes.
In the midst of rapid global technological innovation futurology has been a deep concept that has influenced the development of technology. The post humanistic approach to technology has developed into popular culture with the aim of developing technology for the future. As an emergent popular culture, futurology has been instrumental in the inspiration and the expanding demand in the use of a collaborative solution and approaches to learning foreign languages using advanced artificial intelligence systems (Rutsky 98). A global popular culture of technological advancement and adoption of new digital solutions to perform daily functions. The demand for technological solutions that offer useful methods of communication, entertainment, and socialization has been on a popular trend since the onset of the 20th century due to the compression of time, space, and place into a single platform. Insofar, technology has been at the center and an engine of social change in the 19th century.
Public and professional entities that provide society with information such as the media, science, scholarly researchers, science fiction, game industry, and movie industry have been influential shaping popular culture across the world These entities produce digital content that has been instrumental in the creation of new technologies over the years. New technologies such as virtual reality, immersive technology, and augmented reality that has featured in movies such as the Star Trek, Star Wars, The Matrix, have been inspirational in the development of core technologies such as the virtual reality games such as Lone Echo that use a zero-gravity platform. These sources of popular culture have formed a functional but fundamental concept of the future in most fields. In the same fashion, ideas of ubiquitous tutoring systems that allow students to learn from home through an adaptive and interactive interface have shaped technological imaginations (Lambiase 3). The potential of advanced exciting learning experiences using an automated artificial intelligence system that corrects students while learning a foreign language is desirable and drivers of the popular technological culture.
The application of artificial intelligence in the teaching industry to emulate the behaviors of learners and teachers, understand the working of the mind, and subsequently apply these principles to improve the process is increasingly becoming a popular research area. Through machine learning, AI technology offers a scientific approach to teaching a foreign language by digitally collecting speech data via advanced input mechanisms and use the information to power ubiquitous devices and programs that can be used by leaners. The use of AI in teaching foreign languages has the potential of generating insights into how the learning process takes place and provides new technological mechanisms for assessing learning.
Artificial intelligent systems must however have knowledge of the teaching and learning methodologies as well as knowledge of the natural language. This field of using AI in computing natural languages is compounded into computational linguistics which has been affected by popular culture on the use of technology in the 21 century to create, enact, and organize and systematically new social experiences. According to Szeman and O’Brien (286), the 21st century has undergone changes and shifts that have reshaped human experience and contemporary popular culture.
The concept of artificial intelligence has been adopted across multiple fields to solve problems using machine learning, neural networks, and deep learning. In the teaching of a foreign language, computational linguistic is utilized by using computational syntax principles. This principle is responsible for the processing of natural language and processing language as well as automatically breaking down sentences. An intelligent computer-assisted language learning system is equipped with tutoring systems capable of analyzing sentences. The systems are also equipped with parsers which are purposely used to make errors made by a learner using the system. The parsers often have two rule systems, the learners and that of the teacher, each with different models of the same language. In this fashion, AI is used to break down a sentence into parts of speech and consequently process the input from teachers and learners.
With the aim of remedying errors, the teacher’s model of the language is expected to be the correct one with a standard feature. The learner’s language model on the other hand is expected to be non-conformant. Non-conformity in the learner’s language is technically referred to as errors and are often made up of interlanguage features. The challenges of combining these two models by a parser into one standard model are often intolerant and full of errors. However, a parser can capture both qualities of language models from both the student and the teacher and determine the correct model which will be used to correct errors.
A quasi-experiment conducted by Marina Dodigovic using an Intelligent Tutor device proved that AI can be efficient in remedying and reducing errors by a rate of 83% (Dodigovic 102). Equipped with an artificially intelligent computer program, the device was used in diagnosing and correcting some of the common exhibited by learners taking English foreign language learning programs. The device contained a parser recognized a fair amount of correct language model while at the same time making sense of the errors made by learners. The parser used the bug-rules also known as the mal-rules to analyze grammar using an inherent system of commands and grammatical errors (Heft). The parser is however expected to be of perfect competence and not accept any errors in the learner’s model language.
In the development of a readability formula, an AI is fed with a language model of golf-standard that is large enough for the language training curriculum. The language corpus is then used in an algorithm to analyze the linguistic characteristics of the learner’s language and make predictions of text. The method of correcting errors however varies due to different philosophies on the learning process of a foreign language. According to Handlin (164), learning a foreign language is not a completely implicit process. Taking note of an error during the assessment invites the student to cognitively compare between their language and the target language. Other theories approach the learning process as an explicit process and error correction might not be as effective as expected.
The educational value of popular culture in the learning of a foreign language is highlighted by various scholars. The use of popular culture in the learning of foreign language using artificial intelligence offers a myriad of advantages. The use of cultural content is instrumental in exposing learners to a wide range of current interests in popular culture. Popular culture, therefore, serves as a catalyzing factor and motivation in the learning process. A hybrid system of learning made up of an artificially intelligent system that incorporates non-specialized teaching material. Artificial intelligence has the possibility of including context during teaching as well as shifting attention from a limited unit of discourse to larger ones.
Research studies on traditional education methods of teaching have shown that popular culture resources such as songs can be incorporated into artificially intelligent systems (Scott et al. 145). Social media and information technologies are primary creative and expressive platforms which have been tested by using artificial intelligent chart systems to interact with users. The post humanistic inspiration towards autonomy and ubiquity systems in however primal in this case. The determination is however technological and promises human freedom to human beings as well as creative expressions through the inclusion of virtual aspects. Human beings will be increasingly surrounded by integrated technology with limited post-human identities.
DISCUSSION
The use of AI in interpreting natural languages and a futuristic concept of interaction between advanced biotechnological machines capable of understanding human language. As popular culture futurology holds a fundamental conceptualization of post-human and towards a post Anthropocene period where human dominance will come below other forms of existence. According to Abrams (248), nanotechnology, genetic engineering, and natural language processing capabilities will dominate the post-human era. According to Moore’s Law, computers, robots, and other advanced intelligent systems will outrun human intelligence and be self-reproductive (Cornips 120). The human species might in the future require a new approach of categorizing and defining themselves.
The autonomy, social, deliberate, communicative, and emotive nature of human beings is the most definitive feature. Currently, this allows users to be the dominant species and the only law-giver on the face of the earth relative to other species. However, these characteristics are exposed to constant radical changes. The acquisition of the ability to capture, process, and interpret natural human language by another non-human object puts human beings vulnerable to technological transformation. According to Haraway (201); Armand (242), human beings are also changing and acquiring futuristic characteristics like the use of a bioengineered prosthesis, titanium bones, immune reprogrammers, artificial pacemakers, and body implants increases. These features make human beings partial cyborgs with both technological features and biological as well as lacking no certain binary gender. The human species might eventually be required to evaluate the subject matter of social sciences.
The debate over the transformation of autonomous artificial intelligent machines into self-fashioned entities capable of creating their laws invokes research on the role of popular culture. In this research paper, the use of artificial intelligence in learning foreign languages, the ability of AI to read natural language, interpreting the meaning, and assessing a leaner’s language model using language syntax was studied (Foucault 211). The effects of futurology as a popular culture that inspires an artificial intelligent language learning process was also handled. Futurology is seen to be inspired by various sources of popular culture including news media, the film industry, and scholarly publications. The post humanistic approach to the development of futuristic technologies with artificial intelligence shows that the incorporation of adequate advanced biotechnology has the potential of altering the cognitive and biological features of human beings. The human species might face challenges in the absence of self-description and fashioning. This transformation will break the current limits of the human being.
According to Dialogues (54), the current frameworks of human rights are explicit and place a responsibility on each individual to ensure them as well as inherent benefits. According to Dialogues (20), this model model of human rights is however threatened under Posthumanism where the explicit definition and description of “human” becomes impossible. The inferiority of other forms of existence compared to human beings also becomes less significant as AI becomes superior and human beings lose the dominant law-making privileges. The hailed integration of digital technologies into daily routes as well as biotechnological technologies is in contention with post-human concepts due to the lack of clear separations as to when technology is described as post humanistic.
CONCLUSION
Learning a foreign language using AI is hugely dependent on the amount of technology including machine learning, neural network, and reasoning to effectively offer learners a meaningful educational tool. The collection of personal data by the AI system to assess the performance of students raises security and privacy issues. The mining of data by these systems will be affected if security is considered. The sharp compromise is also compounded by the possibility of neural networks that do not capabilities of understanding processed data, forging, and cheating the decision process. Neural networks also have a security bottleneck due to the use of open internal methods of data representation. It is, therefore, challenging to create an AI that can explain data representation and decision processes.
Artificial intelligence is an emerging technology and a concept that is undergoing development with the possibilities of being used in creating new experiences in research in the use of artificial intelligence in major sectors. The anticipation and imagination of the future and the opportunities in artificial intelligence technology compound to the popular culture on futurology which has been also influential in the demand for research on the field. The advancement into complex AI that can learn new languages on their by exploiting Big Data and machine learning places a primary threat to the human species. AI technologies also pose a risk of mass surveillance and collection of private information without consent for machine learning purposes. For this debate, futurology remains to be a fundamental popular culture and a driver of technological research into autonomous systems with advanced capabilities. A future characterized by a tension between the human species and advanced autonomous artificial intelligent systems might be inevitable under the Posthuman perspective.
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