AI Dominance in English Threatens Thousands of Languages Lacking Digital Footprint
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English dominates the internet and generative AI, which risks threatening thousands of other languages that have little online presence to train AI systems.
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Researchers are racing to create more training data and build AI systems for lower-resource languages before they vanish from disuse.
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Poor quality translations and AI outputs could create a feedback loop that degrades performance in lower-resourced languages.
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If young people can't use AI systems in their native tongue, they may abandon those languages over time.
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Efforts to build culturally-aware AI tools could help give lower-resourced languages a presence online and preserve them for future generations.