Hello my friends and welcome back to the Easy English Podcast.
I'm your host Oliver, and this is the best place to practice your English listening skills, while learning new vocabulary and phrases with interesting topics, I hope.
So today I have a very interesting and relevant topic.
And it's one that I am sure that you are sick of hearing about.
But because we are talking about it so much all around the world, I think it's important that you become prepared and able to talk about it in English, and that is AI, or artificial intelligence.
So I've made an episode about this in the past, generally about AI and some of the changes and my thoughts about the future.
But in today's episode, I want to give you even more vocabulary related to this topic.
And how are we going to do that?
We're going to look at some of the ways that AI is changing our world quickly.
But we're also going to look about some of the predictions for the future and the ethics, which we'll talk about in a little bit.
So that's like the more morality or morals around it.
So really like the ethical implications of AI.
So what it means for us.
And I'm going to talk a little bit about, as someone that makes podcasts, how AI is changing podcasts and English teachers and learners online.
So I'm going to give you a little bit of a warning with this.
If you're listening as well.
This week there are a couple of very interesting episodes and content coming out on Patreon.
So there should be a new News in Easy English episode on Patreon.
And as well as that, we are having a brand new bonus episode.
And that bonus episode is continuing a little bit of today's topic. about ethical dilemmas.
So we're going to be looking at ethics, what is right and what is wrong.
And in this Patreon bonus episode we're going to look at a few ethical dilemmas, such as the trolley problem.
So if you're interested in a slightly more advanced topic, make sure that you are subscribed and a Patreon member.
You can check out the link in the description below and sign up to get access to all of the additional bonus content and transcripts.
And of course, it supports the show.
Let's look at our key vocabulary today.
As always, I'm going to read five essential words that I want you to listen for in today's episode.
And they're going to help us to have more complex conversations conversation about AI and technology.
The first word is one that I have used a few times already in this show.
And that is ethics.
Ethics.
This is a noun.
And ethics are simply the moral principles that govern a person's sorry a person or a group's behavior that sounds like a complicated definition and it is but essentially it's what we think is right or wrong so as a society so for example with society's ethics we think that murder is wrong that it's bad we might think that helping others is good These are a very, this is a very simple example of ethics.
The second word for today is algorithm. algorithm and this comes up a lot when we're talking about technology and artificial intelligence and what algorithm simply means it's a set of rules or calculations that is followed by a computer this can be to solve a problem or to work something out so for example social media has an algorithm Instagram has an algorithm, and it works out what to show you.
Based on the information that it has about your behavior, your content consumption and you, it decides the algorithm decides what to show you next.
Our third word for today is automation, automation.
And this is the use of technology to perform tasks with minimal human assistance.
Essentially taking tasks away from us having to actually do them ourselves.
So we're automating something that we would otherwise do.
That is automation.
So with factory work and production, a lot of this work has had automation.
It is now automated.
Our fourth word today is prediction.
Prediction.
And this is a noun.
A prediction is a statement.
So you're saying what you think about what will happen in the future.
It's a statement about the future.
So many experts are making predictions about AI.
For example, I predict that AI will change. revolutionize or improve medicine and healthcare.
That is a prediction.
I'm saying what will happen in the future.
And of course, I don't know for sure what will happen.
So it is a prediction.
And our final vocabulary for today is bias.
Bias.
And this is a noun.
It's a very good word.
So bias is when you're, let's say, it's another word, it's quite hard, prejudice.
It's perhaps when you're more in favor or against one thing.
And this affects your view.
So your bias, your opinion is affecting how you consider or talk about something else.
And in this case, it means when you're more favoured towards one thing over another.
So you're biased towards towards something over another thing.
So let's say we have to make sure that AI models do not have a bias towards something.
So they prefer or favor one thing over another.
OK, those last few words were quite hard.
Don't worry if you don't understand them.
We will hear them in context during today's episode.
So I want you to try and listen for those words to actively listen and see if you can hear them.
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It really helps to improve the show, to keep things going and to keep growing this power project.
Let's go to our main content for today's episode.
Okay, so we talked a little bit about predictions.
Right with that word, I think our word was prediction itself in our vocab list.
So when we talk about AI, we're talking a lot about the future in many cases.
So what it means for the future.
And when we talk about the future, we use the language of speculation and prediction.
Speculation, it's like saying something that you think, but you're not sure.
So we don't know it.
We're kind of speculating.
We're saying, hmm, I think this...
And prediction, of course, is what we said.
So when you say what will happen in the future.
And let's have a look at some different levels of maybe predictions or speculations.
So when we're talking about the future and we're making predictions, we might feel certain about a future thing happening, right?
So when you're certain, it means that you really think that it will happen.
You believe that you know.
So if you have a high certainty level, you believe that something is likely to happen.
So you might be able to say you know, I am highly certain that AI will be incredibly important in the future.
Here are an example of some predictions that people make about AI.
So the first might be that AI is set to transform customer service.
So it's already changing customer service, but it's likely to continue to transform these interactions.
There are also many jobs that might be replaced by automation.
And automation.
As we mentioned that AI automation, it means that machines are taking over repetitive tasks that humans are doing.
This prediction seems to be quite an interesting one for me.
So whenever I look at the past, Any big changes in technology have replaced a lot of human work.
Look at factories, for example.
We had a lot of machines replacing humans making products, producing things.
It was a huge change.
And now with AI, automation is replacing a lot of machines.
Let's say desk jobs, jobs using computers.
So we can have lawyers, we could have admin workers, people who are dealing with lots of text and information.
That doesn't mean that all of these people are going to be replaced, but but it definitely is going to change their jobs forever.
I think in many fields.
Although I don't know what the future will bring, I think that people will have to adapt to this AI use in order to survive in their job.
Because the people that use AI if they use it well and they use it properly, they will become more productive and therefore more competitive.
So people will want to hire those people more.
When we're also talking about AI, which we're going to do now as well as we continue we're.
I'm going to be talking about pros and cons, so language of pros and cons.
A pro is really a positive or an advantage, and a con is a negative or a disadvantage.
So, for example, a pro of ai would be efficiency, increased efficiency.
A con would be that many people might lose their jobs.
And that last point leads me to some ethical considerations.
So the growth of AI raises some crucial ethical questions.
And this is where that vocabulary we discussed can help us to have a think about morality, fairness and what is right and wrong.
And one of the biggest concerns with AI is bias.
So when we look at AI, it is learning from information from humans.
And of course, humans have a lot of bias.
There is racism sexism, a lot of problems that people have and maybe think about things in a certain way.
And there's a lot of historical information with all of this data.
And the problem is, and some people believe that these AIs algorithms are learning this bias.
And the problem with that is the AI is then not going to be very balanced.
It's going to have bias in certain ways.
And it reinforces or keeps continuing to make that bias, because a lot of people are now getting their information direct from artificial intelligence like ChatGPT or Gemini.
So when people get the information from chat gbt with that bias, that view, they then make content or produce more content with that bias, if this makes sense, and the ai models learn from that content and reuse it again.
So it's almost in my mind like a circle, a continuing circle of content.
So the more that AI like ChatGPT creates content, the more future content will be AI generated and the models will learn from that content.
And it almost will make the content worse over time.
It's a real risk and a real problem.
And of course, with ethical considerations, we have problems when it comes to the creative industry.
So AI is creating things from existing content, from things that it has seen or learned.
For example, when you generate an AI image, it is using existing art.
When you generate an AI song, it is using existing music and songs that it's learning from.
And of course, in my mind, long term, this is bad because it is killing creativity.
Now, I will be completely honest.
You know, I do use AI for some help with the likes of like thumbnail generation based on images that I input or elements that I use.
But I would never use AI to make entire pieces of content.
It's quite concerning to me, particularly in the language learning space, when I see a lot of entirely AI generated content that people are learning from.
Because in many cases, it's not so natural and it lacks a real human touch to it.
That's not to say that AI isn't incredibly useful.
I use artificial intelligence for this podcast to help me organize my work.
So, for example, if I'm making a script for like this episode, I can use ChatGPT to help me structure my script, to maybe check my language, to help improve my work.
So it's using it like a tool, not something to get the information from.
And likewise, AI has helped so much with subtitles.
So being able to read the text and also editing the video itself.
So improving the audio and cutting out mistakes and things like that.
So don't get me wrong.
I do think that AI is good even for podcasts but and for content.
But there is definitely a wrong way to use it.
And there's two main ways that I see some pretty bad uses of AI in even English learning podcasts.
And you need to look out for it.
I've mentioned it before, but there are so many podcasts now that are made even by non native speakers that pretend to be a real person and they are AI voices.
And you might laugh and think, oh, of course I can tell that that is a real, not a real voice.
But you would be surprised.
Some of these voices sound very realistic.
AI, of course, can read scripts.
It can read the content that's generated and try to sound like a real British or American speaker.
It's very hard to trust this content, both from a content perspective, but also at this current time.
To me, a native speaker, it sounds quite unnatural.
It's not fully natural.
And I don't think that learners should be learning from this type of content and copying it.
And I've also noticed the content is really reused.
There's so many podcasts that are essentially making episodes about the same things and with the exact same content, and very similar voices too.
And, of course, the second point is that there's a lot of this content, but it isn't very high quality.
And because there's a lot, i've noticed that the algorithm within a lot of the podcast sites is really promoting a lot of this stuff because people are able to create it easily and quickly.
And it's quite worrying for me because, when I look at the future, I think what does it mean for normal podcasts, for podcasts made by real people that are actually talking and teaching?
Will it be harder to find this content in the future?
And will more people consume AI podcasts? which could make it a lot harder for real people.
So it's just an example, I guess, of how some of this ethics of artificial intelligence and creativity can affect even the podcasting space and English learning.
So that brings me to our listener spotlight, which is something that an AI would probably struggle to do at the moment.
And that is to talk with you and to read your comments and put them into the episode.
And that is something I am going to do today.
In our last week's episode, which was about autumn and Halloween.
So we were talking about particularly autumn and fall, if you're American or have American English. what you love about autumn so some things that you like about autumn and i had loads of comments so i'm going to read a few of them here the first was from jessica so jessica mafia and she said thanks for sharing i love curiosities about culture history everything On my free time, I love to stay near in the nature, especially near water like the sea, pool, waterfalls, rivers or lakes.
The most special part of autumn or fall for me is that it is less hot in my city.
That's an excellent comment and some great, great points about spending time in nature.
I agree.
I think it's especially important to spend time in nature as the days start to get darker.
Because otherwise, if we spend all time indoors, we can start to feel a little bit down, maybe a little bit sad, because we're not getting as much sunlight.
So getting into nature is so important.
Great comment, Jessica.
I have a comment as well.
I hope I say your name correctly.
From Dea from Indonesia.
So Dea or Dea, Dea, Dea from Indonesia.
And she said, I'm new here and I just listened to your podcast.
It's so good.
Thank you for making this podcast.
You're very welcome.
Adea also said, I learned new vocabulary about autumn.
What I love about autumn is the colour of the maple leaves, changing from red to yellow, to red and yellow sorry.
It's so beautiful.
Wow, that's a great observation.
I love the changing color of the leaves too.
It really starts to make me feel cozy and nice when I see those lovely oranges and reds.
They're very beautiful colors.
Okay, I'll read, let's say, a couple more comments.
So two very quick ones as well.
Because we have so many today, I feel like I have to read a few extra.
So the first one I had from Jared and Jared said, hi, thanks for the podcast.
I'm from Columbia, South America, and in my country there isn't autumn because it's a tropical country, but I appreciate your time.
I hope the last episode was still useful for some vocabulary, but I do understand that in many countries it is not autumn or they don't have autumn.
But I'm interested to hear your experiences, what this time of the year is like in your country.
And thank you for leaving that comment.
I have another comment from, again, I'm sorry if I say your name incorrectly, Lady, Lady.
And they said, this is a very good podcast.
Thanks for sharing it.
In fall or autumn, I love the color of the leaves.
I'm from Mexico and the tradition is amazing.
Remembering all the people who died, the food and the costumes.
That's excellent.
It sounds like wonderful traditions.
Thank you all for your comments.
I love reading them.
I read each and every comment that you guys leave.
So please do leave comments and I will take the time to read and reply to as many as I can.
So the question for next week that I want you to answer and comment below is what do you think is good and bad about AI?
So you can give me one thing that you think is positive and one thing that you think is negative about artificial intelligence.
Or if you don't think anything is good, you can give me only bad or vice versa.
If you think everything is good and it's not bad at all, you can give me only good too.
Okay, so...
Today you've gained some new vocabulary, talking about predictions with artificial intelligence, looking at some of the pros and cons, and we've even looked at the ethical considerations, with creativity and bias, and a little bit about how AI is even affecting podcasting, podcasts and teaching English, I guess, through podcasts, etc.
So it's a very hard topic.
You've done a good job if you're listening this far, and I really hope that you've enjoyed this episode.
Remember, if you go to the Patreon, if you become a Patreon subscriber, there's another episode out this week.
And that episode is about ethical dilemmas.
So we're looking at the trolley problem and some other examples.
So for more advanced topics like that, you can check out the Patreon.
If you want to get my ebook as well, which teaches you English phrasal verbs using short stories, you can check out the link in the description below.
Thank you so much for all of your support and thank you for listening to this podcast.
I appreciate each and every one of you.
Have a wonderful rest of your day and i will see you soon goodbye.
