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AI companies want us to think that their machines can easily replace all sorts of human tasks, but try talking to a customer chatbot about your misplaced delivery, and you\u2019ll quickly remember the limitations of AI.<\/p>\nI won\u2019t ever say I\u2019m an expert at spotting the work of artificial intelligence (AI) in creative writing, images or videos. Especially as it becomes more sophisticated, I feel fairly certain I won\u2019t be able to.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
But as someone who actually spends quite a bit of time writing and reading, I am still usually able to spot what\u2019s written with AI and similar tools. And I\u2019m definitely aware of the limitations of AI when it comes to nuanced, complicated tasks like translation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
AI companies want us to think that their machines can easily replace all sorts of human tasks, but try talking to a customer chatbot about your misplaced delivery, and you\u2019ll quickly remember the limitations of AI.<\/p>\n
For some things, AI is helpful. A friend of mine uses it to practice her Spanish \u2014 nice and slow, everything written. I have a friend, an experienced teacher, who uses it to help reduce lesson planning time. Sometimes you can use it as a thesaurus: \u201cWhat\u2019s a better word for \u2018throb\u2019 that doesn\u2019t sound weird and sexual?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sure, AI will make up sources that don\u2019t actually exist, but most people don\u2019t seem overly concerned. When it comes to the environmental impact of the gigantic power grid-draining data centers AI must use, though, I fear we\u2019ll only react properly once it\u2019s too late.\u00a0Or maybe people will think it\u2019s a fair price to pay for all this convenience.<\/p>\n
Admittedly, most of my relationship to AI has not been all that positive, and I\u2019m glad that Mexico doesn\u2019t seem to be diving in headfirst into AI as quickly as the U.S. is. As a \u201cservice\u201d that none of us voted to have, which, on top of that, is using all of our data to \u201clearn,\u201d I feel pretty defensive.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And none of us are protected from its effects \u2014 we\u2019ve all been tossed into the Wild West without seatbelts or helmets. Even AI company leaders admit that AI \u201cmight\u201d end up destroying humanity, but they just \u201chave to\u201d move forward.<\/p>\n
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Sam Altman is the CEO of OpenAI, which created ChatGPT, one of the major AI tools fueling the use of AI language translation \u2014 and, well, just about everything else. (Steve Jennings\/Wikimedia Commons)<\/p>\n
Do they? Do they have to move forward? I personally heard no booming voice from the sky, and I\u2019ll gladly just go back to using thesaurus.com<\/a>. Really, it\u2019s fine.<\/p>\n An endless retraining loop<\/p>\n So when I hear people bring up using AI to learn Spanish, I bristle somewhat.<\/p>\n My first bristling instinct is admittedly selfish: Nearly every skill I\u2019ve learned while living in Mexico that can actually keep me surviving in the economy is ripe for the AI picking. I\u2019m still a writer, but writing doesn\u2019t pay the bills. Teaching English did for a while. Translating did for a good while<\/a>, though all that work has now dried up too.\u00a0<\/p>\n Currently, I\u2019m an audio description writer (kind of like making subtitles for the blind), a job that I love. But I know that it\u2019s only a matter of time before AI gets good enough to swipe that one away.<\/p>\n How many times can a person be expected to retrain while also juggling all of life\u2019s other requirements? With some predicting that AI will soon be able to do the job of anyone who works in front of a computer, a lot of us might be about to find out.<\/p>\n For now, I\u2019m hanging on as well as I can.<\/p>\n What AI can and can\u2019t do<\/p>\n I keep hearing the same platitude when it comes to jobs: \u201cYou won\u2019t be replaced by AI, you\u2019ll be replaced by someone who works with AI.\u201d\u00a0Cute.<\/p>\n And in the language field, that\u2019s kind of true, I guess? Usually, the \u201csomeone who works with AI,\u201d though, is the company itself working with AI so that it doesn\u2019t have to pay anyone to work with you.<\/p>\n As someone who\u2019s been involved in many of these human-to-machine transitions, there are a few things I can say with confidence:<\/p>\n 1. AI is not a good transcriber<\/p>\n One of my many professional hats over the years has been as a legal transcription editor. In many courtrooms these days, AI transcription services are being used to get what was said into printed words. And let me tell you, it does not do a good job \u2014 not even the professional-grade software that you pay for.<\/p>\n Accents, mumblings, people following the natural cadence of speech that they do all mean that if you want an AI transcript to be legible, you\u2019d better have an experienced editor on hand who can listen closely to all that and write a clean copy for you. And to use those cool services like a translation app or the new AirPods<\/a>, people will have to speak slowly and clearly in complete sentences to be understood.<\/p>\n Now, if you and the other person don\u2019t speak each other\u2019s languages at all, I suppose it\u2019s better than nothing. Still, it\u2019s not the miracle it\u2019s made out to be, and misunderstandings are likely.<\/p>\n If you\u2019ve got a well-written text with proper spelling and grammar, most AI software will do a fairly good job translating it. What it won\u2019t do is translate style. Spanish writing, I\u2019ve long said, is the king of the run-on sentence. \u201cBreak things up,\u201d I\u2019d advise new translators. \u201cEnglish speakers can\u2019t stay focused reading a sentence that goes on for more than three lines.\u201d<\/p>\n When there\u2019s a dual AI job \u2014 transcription and translation \u2014 things get stickier. After most of my subtitle translation work dried up, I would occasionally get assignments to \u201cproofread\u201d AI\u2019s translations. Most of the time, it wound up being more work than doing it from scratch would have been \u2014 and for far less money. If the transcription was bad, then the translation was bad, and it became quite a bit to untangle.<\/p>\n 3. There\u2019s nothing like actually talking to people to learn how to talk to people<\/p>\n For all my grouchiness about AI, the point is not to discourage you from using it as a tool to help with your Spanish learning. Whatever helps you communicate is good, and whatever helps you learn is good. But AI companies are trying to convince us in so many areas that AI is just as good or better than other humans. When it comes to language learning, it\u2019s simply not.<\/p>\n While AI might be able to explain every detailed grammatical rule that you like, it can\u2019t build a relationship with you. It can\u2019t be your friend or tell you about its personal experiences, always intrinsically linked to the culture and language around the tellers.<\/p>\n So if you\u2019re able, use the tools you need, but try to learn the language and make friends the old-fashioned way. It\u2019s worth it.<\/p>\n Sarah DeVries<\/a> is a writer and translator based in Xalapa, Veracruz. She can be reached through her website, sarahedevries.substack.com.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I won\u2019t ever say I\u2019m an expert at spotting the work of artificial intelligence (AI) in creative writing,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":123719,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[345,343,344,85,46,78317,78318,125,1894],"class_list":["post-123718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-learning-spanish","tag-living-in-mexico","tag-technology","tag-translations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123718\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Two](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/pexels-cristian-rojas-7772205.jpg\")
AI provides convenient Spanish practice, but it\u2019s far from flawless and probably won\u2019t know slang and other nuances of the language that native speakers use. (Christian Rojas\/Pexels)
\n2. AI is a pretty good translator\u2026if it\u2019s all transcribed properly (it\u2019s not)<\/p>\n