AI is coming for every English teacher in Japan's job
The Bulletin (Issue 55)
On the weekends I like to imagine I am keeping up with the world outside of English teaching in Japan. I do this by subscribing to a bunch of podcasts, video streams and email newsletters that are frankly above my pay grade, but every so often something in all the crud filters through to my brain. But three items last week hit me like steel bolts to the temple:
Watch five minutes of this from New York investment podcasters considering the implications of AI on teaching and tutoring:
And a related video — sure it’s a bit of an artificial conversation, but I can’t see how this instant AI interpreter and its descendants don’t herald massive changes to the language teaching biz.
Oh. And this video of ChatGPT’s latest free version makes me realise that changes are not far in the future, they are available here and now (watch as much as you can stand. I couldn’t abide the AI’s flirtiness for more than a minute or two):
What does this all mean for the English as a foreign language teacher in Japan? Here’s what I thought a year ago when AI popped up on everyone’s radar screens, here’s how I’ve been using AI in my teaching biz so far, but here’s what I think now (that’s different from what I’ve posted before):
Once AI apps become ubiquitous (and they will very quickly) it will mean a free English tutor will be on call 24-7 on every smartphone that can listen and guide the novice English speaker at their own speed and with their own bespoke programme featuring unique learning materials. So what? So it might be all a cash-strapped parent needs to do is cancel language lessons for their kid.
But it gets more existential than that: the instant-translation and interpretation tech will become so seamless and reliable that the very idea of learning a foreign language becomes a quaint and obsolete notion (within a year or two?) AKA, technology has its cake and eats it, not even leaving a crumb to the teachers working today.
Josh Brown (in the first video above) is right: it’s not that AI will take every English teacher’s job, just most of them. The folks that thrive in the profession will be the ones that have figured out how to provide an excellent level of teaching — either marshaling an AI army themselves or being so uniquely good at motivating, inspiring and having fun with their students, (a select few) parents will pay them a small fortune. The mediocre teacher need not apply.
It is the worst of times (for the employed English teacher as conditions continue to erode) and the best of times (for the self-employed) who can pivot to teaching culture and language to a smaller more specialized clientele.
What do you think?
Patrick