The Language of AI — An Introduction

Coupled with a few first tips

ChatGPT rocked the world in late 2022.

Since then, there have been hundreds of thousands of articles written about it and all we can do with AI. From managing projects to learning any topic or writing articles, it can easily feel like ChatGPT is the answer to every problem we have.

Many more AI tools have also come out. From tools to create images like MidJourney or DALL-E to ones that create an AI voice of you like Decrypt. Even Duolingo got on the train by connecting with GPT-4 to improve what it can do.

AI fascinates me.

Languages fascinate me.

Using AI to learn languages excites me.🤩

This new newsletter is the result of my curiosity reaching the point of no return. I’ve spent too much time playing with ChatGPT to learn and practice my languages to not want to share my experience.

I don’t want anybody to miss the opportunity to use such an incredible tool.

Now.

I’m no expert. Hell, nobody using AI right now is an expert yet. It’s still too new for anybody to have seen or even gotten. But it’s no reason to not share all I’m discovering with you.

What you’ll get

The goal of The Language of AI is simple: Help you learn to use AI to become better language learners.

It’s not about getting a language partner or teacher. It’s about making AI tools the assistant of your dreams.

It all comes down to knowing what to say as a prompt.

Having a great idea is pointless without the right prompt.

For example, when I first tried to get ChatGPT to help me create a file I could import into Anki, I struggled. It kept giving me bullet points, sentences explaining what to do, or a code that made no sense.

It was only after experimenting and tweaking the prompt countless times that I found a prompt that would give me the results I wanted every. single. time.

You will find below a list of sentences. Prepare all of them to be imported in Anki easily with the [Target Language] on the front and the [Native Language] sentence on the back. Create it in code format to import with a semi-colon as a separator, as in "그의 정성스럽게 짠 편지는 내 마음을 따뜻하게 만들었다.;His thoughtfully written letter warmed my heart."

This tweaking is called prompt engineering. We’ll get more into this and much more as we go but don’t worry. I won’t make you learn a ton of jargon just for the fun of it. You’ll use every word you’ll learn.

We’ll kick things off in two weeks by learning about what a persona is and how to craft different types of personas to get different results.

Free AI or Paid AI?

ChatGPT (relying on GPT-3.5) is free but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit loving its paid version relying on GPT-4. Still, I will focus on how to do everything on the free version and might often add a section at the end to mention how to go further with GPT-4.

We’ll see and adapt as we go.

Then again, I will most likely also put out a few editions completely about GPT-4 to really dive into what we can do with the plugins and access to the internet.

Again, we’ll see and adapt.

Let me know what you’re looking for so I can dig into it too!

A few first tips

We’ll surely dive into each of those later on but here are the real basics I think everybody hoping to use AI to learn languages should know:

• Every “chat” will be different. When having a conversation with ChatGPT, a great way to practice a language is to ask it to “Regenerate” an answer. You will get a different response to the same sentence. Just like nobody would give the exact same answer to the same question in real life.

• Giving a “persona” to ChatGPT at the start of a conversation is the best way to get the type of answer you’re looking for. This can get difficult so we’ll dive into this later again.

• Some tweaking might be necessary. Even if the conversation may follow your rules at the beginning, ChatGPT can stop following your rules. When that happens. Stay calm and re-explain what you want.

  

  Here’s an example of me having to redirect ChatGPT after it goes astray in a conversation where it should “only respond in German.”

• Try to be as concise and clear as possible in your prompts. The more nuance you put in, the more likely the answer won’t be what you’re looking for.

• Don’t trust ChatGPT when you ask for facts. If you’re learning a “large” language, trust its language skills but beware if you’re learning a lesser-known language.

• AI tools with access to the internet can be great. GPT-4 seems to be the best currently but other tools such as Perplexity.ai, Bard, or Bing Chat¹ are good alternatives.

• AI tools are not just replacements for teachers or language partners. They can help you in pretty much any situation you imagine, in your target language or not. They can also act as all of them at the same time provided your prompts are clear enough.

• Just like you’d do in real life, stay polite. Say thank you and sorry. Just because it doesn’t have “feelings” doesn’t mean you should be impolite. ChatGPT’s responses can evolve depending on your politeness too.

There’s a lot more but let’s not go too far too soon.

Next time, we’ll dive into personas, how difficult they can be to create, and how awesome they are when you’re clear enough.

Thanks for reading!
Mathias

1. Based on ChatGPT but not always as good.