Speaker
Description
Four years after the public launch of ChatGPT, Generative AI has entered many domains, both private and professional, and it is not going away. As anticipated in a prescient presentation at eLex 2019 (The Sintra variations), AI bots have begun to compete with dictionaries as reference tools for language-related tasks. Yet despite the pervasiveness of this emerging technology, dictionaries remain important consultation tools for certain types of language problems, at least for advanced learners, who appear able to choose critically between dictionaries and AI tools depending on the task at hand. At the same time, recent studies comparing the effectiveness of chatbots and dictionaries suggest that AI chatbots are not necessarily more effective than dictionaries—especially bilingual dictionaries—whether measured in terms of immediate success or longer-term learning. Against this empirical backdrop, the talk will sketch the current and near-future roles of dictionaries and AI tools.