Again, I wonder – are we discussing, Will AI be important? Or that AI will completely take over all human functions? Or that AI can be helpful for language leraning?
I think everyone has no doubt that AI will take over more and more aspects of human work and the economy. Previously, industrial automation reduced the need for low-skill repetitive manufacturing elements of human labor. We’re now seeing the early aspects of AI taking over more knowledge-oriented parts of the economy.
However, I think we’re discussing – will AI replace the need for language learning? There are a lot of responses that are missing the key questions of – why and also when?
In the “near future”, the idea that AI can replicate a human conversation does not mean that humans will immediately prefer to go to a bar and hang out with an AI. The question you’re answering there is not about language learning, but rather will humans want to spend time talking with AIs (my gut feeling is no). If an AI can realistically simulate a conversation, would humans will prefer to have AI spouses?
I think the original question is more about – to what extent can AI replace the need for language learning – i.e. will AI translation technologies be so powerful that you wouldn’t need to learn another language. This tech could work like “Star Trek’s Universal Translator”, and it’s the reason why even aliens from other galaxies seem to speak English. You would essentially speak whatever native language you wanted, and you would receive a real-time translation for whatever you hear.
In the “far future”, anything is possible. However, we might as well be debating for fun if there will be any need for humans at all. The hard part is to not fall into unrealistic hype. You can see that many technologies will take quite a long time before they can be realistically used.
In terms of the “near future”, I think the question is more about what is the impact of some of these new technologies on society in the next 10-20 years.