Why English teachers in Japan can’t ignore the coming AI storm

The Free Talk Bulletin (Issue 4)

This is an AI image I made by clicking on the “generate” button in Substack and typing in “Rain in Japan”. Far from perfect, but certainly way better than anything I could do alone in 30 seconds.

AI taking my teaching job? But I’ve always made a go of it, no-one’s going to replace me, besides, I’m self-employed, I got skills dammit, there’s no need for me to be worried, right?

I’m sorely tempted to just shrug my shoulders at the AI storm clouds, hide beneath my existing practices, spout some self-serving BS like technology will never replace human interaction and ignore AI, refuse to adapt, see out my remaining years as an eikiawa teacher and take early retirement as soon as possible before my income dwindles to nothing.

That’s not an option unless you are planning on quitting the workforce entirely this year. I think we are going to get caught in the deluge. So, if, like me, you can’t ignore AI, what are the options? I see three possible courses of action:

Option 1: Refuse to adapt to AI and fight

This is the direction the Hollywood Writer’s Guild have taken, in their reaction to screenwriters’ declining pay as the movie business is rocked by streaming and anticipated adoption of AI. I’m sympathetic. And while my inclination is to side with the little writers versus the big studio execs, not to mention to support humans vs AI should I have to choose sides in a looming existential crisis (I do have basic survival instincts after all), the problem is today… and today, I got bills to pay.

Option 2: Jump aboard the AI express

AI can do amazing things. Like, now. Here’s an example of how enterprising students could hook up voice recognition with ChatGPT and have a personal language tutor, available on demand 24-7, for free.

I see fellow teachers on Facebook geeking out over how fantastic these gizmos are right now and have been getting their students to work on prompts to chat with AI, they’ve happily handed over student report-writing to AI and can’t wait to find other ways AI can make their lives easier. I’m sympathetic to these folk too, but their eagerness to hand over their fiefdoms to AI, without much thought as to how their prompts may be teaching AI to replace us all sooner than any of us would like, makes me queasy.

Option 3. Stake out the middle ground

The harsh truth is change is not coming, it’s here already. If what you do is easily replaceable by AI, then you are going to be replaced. In English teaching in Japan, I’d say those in the firing line are teachers who make a living from producing lesson materials and textbooks (er, people like me) and those engaged in the more regimented (what I would call the more tedious) side of teaching — preparing students for examinations, those teachers focusing on grammar and such.

Am I sure of this? No, it’s impossible to predict with any certainty how the future will unfold even for really smart folk. A current truth is your job isn’t going to be taken by AI, it’ll be taken by someone who is using AI. And I think that is a reasonable thing to assume. If so, then you really have only one choice to make: stand your ground as a matter of principle and never give an inch to AI; or just accept that the toothpaste is out the tube. This, I think, is where I find myself, toothbrush in hand.

Kevin Kelly, grand old man of internet truisms, reckons the future belongs to the AI whisperers, those who work out what prompts work best to get the most from AI. Maybe so.

OK. So what should I do?

I can’t answer for you, but here’s an approach I’m following:

1. Learn what’s possible now. Try out Chat GPT. Go to OpenAI.com and sign up for a free account. Start playing around with what it can do. I’ve not spent much time on it, but already I can see it is excellent at generating sample role plays. It’s great at producing lists of options, writing business letters and translating to and from Japanese and English with markedly better sounding results than Google translate.

2. I’ve used AI as a writing assistant for fiction. I’ve been working on a graded reader series of Hana Walker mystery short stories for Japanese junior high school kids. I’ve prompted it by giving it a list of main characters and the title of the story. It generates generic stories with far too much telling and not enough showing, and it has characters behaving in odd ways (it doesn’t understand character motivation, it just mimics the shape of a short story), but it sometimes comes up with a plot twist that I’d not thought of. It’s good at helping produce a rough draft that with (human) editing can be used to turn out good quality material at twice or three times the speed it would have taken me with no AI help.

3. And that’s just skimming the surface. I could probably generate at speed a very good textbook or app for students of English without having to source the writing or artwork beyond a few well-thought-out prompts to AI chat and graphics apps.

4. Maybe the era of standardised textbooks is coming to an end. Why not cater to individual students’ specific needs with an AI individually designed syllabus and materials? A teacher who knows their students well could provide extra value this way.

5. Got a specific grammar question? AI can answer it immediately with examples. This is great for beginner teachers (but begs the question: why wouldn’t the student just cut out the middle man and go straight to AI?)

But just about here is where I draw the line. Because these suggestions don’t fundamentally change the status of teachers. I’m assuming the teacher is in the driver’s seat of the AI juggernaut. And I’m still assuming that people will prefer to speak to other people — that people want and need to learn English to communicate with other humans.

But my assumptions here could be wrong. Very wrong. And then what?