Computer scientist Pascale Fung can imagine a rosy future in which polyglot AI helpers like ChatGPT bridge language barriers. In that world, Indonesian store owners fluent only in local dialects might reach new shoppers by listing their products online in English. “It can open opportunities,” Fung says—then pauses. She’s spotted the bias in her vision of a more interconnected future: The AI-aided shopping would be one-sided, because few Americans would bother to use AI translation to help research products advertised in Indonesian. “Americans are not incentivized to learn another language,” she says.
Not every American fits that description—about one in five speak another language at home—but the dominance of English in global commerce is real.
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