We live in a world of perpetual evolution and progress. New and updated applications, software, and artificial intelligence (AI) are features that mark this era. If technology has the power to revolutionise our world and is creating alarming concerns, what are we to expect within the next decade?

Since its launch in November 2022, generative AI chatbot ChatGPT has not disappeared from people’s lips. It has been the focus of many conferences, meetings, and editorials across various industries worldwide. At the onset, many questions arose in the education sector, particularly from colleagues who teach a discipline within the humanities — notably writing courses such as academic writing and foreign languages.

For the past decade, many colleagues within the humanities have been apprehensive about the future of the discipline, especially with a trend towards science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors. In fact, a number of renowned universities have significantly cut budgets in the humanities; some have even discontinued programmes altogether. Could AI worsen the crisis in the humanities?

With higher educational institutions still struggling to implement policies to guide the marking of assignments aided by AI, lecturers are not on one accord as to how to treat the matter. However, many have acknowledged gaps in terms of content, critical-thinking skills, and personal and original touch to some take-home projects submitted by students. But with the constant upgrades of ChatGPT, the output is likely to improve significantly.

A few days ago, OpenAI released the latest model – GPT-4o – for both the free and paid versions of ChatGPT. This model comes with a natural and emotional sounding voice assistant and vision capabilities. Multimodal by design, GPT-4o was rebuilt and retrained from scratch to understand speech-to-speech as well as other forms of input and output without first converting the content into text format. In fact, reviews suggest that GPT-4o voice and video leave other voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, and even Google’s Gemini on Android looking like out-of-date antiques.

It is also said that this assistant is fast and more conversational than the ones used by other software. It can even do real-time translations. This undoubtedly raises the question of whether the need for translators and interpreters will become obsolete. Of course, accuracy matters and is important, but if people are able to communicate and make sense with minor errors, some folks may not see the need for trained professionals.

I am all for the teaching of modern languages because it is not just about learning vocabulary and grammar but also about cultivating tolerance, openness to otherness, intellectual curiosity, appreciating cultural diversity, and living harmoniously — all of which fall under intercultural communicative competence. Notwithstanding, universities may want to design programmes in applied foreign languages. How can languages align with STEM, for example? Equally important is twinning the humanities with a technical or vocational skill.

We have to rethink how we deliver education for a future that will be more technologically and skills-driven.

Oneil Madden is a lecturer in languages at Northern Caribbean University and a PhD candidate in didactics and linguistics at Clermont Auvergne University, France. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or maddenoniel@yahoo.com.