Linguistics in the AI age

I'm very interested in the study of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and DeepSeek. I explore how these models work and how linguists, especially computational linguists, word frequency specialists, and semanticists, contribute to their development. With students, I have done some research on the automatic translation quality of some of these models.

I always think that linguistics is a very good practical choice for students, as long as you combine it with other courses such as law or social science. And there are many other interesting aspects of linguistics like animal communication and neurolinguistics, which teach us more about ourselves as the human species.

Ten years ago, with two brilliant French and Chinese programmers, I worked on a language app that could rate English speech in real time. Duolingo, which didn’t exist at that time, offers pretty good word learning, sentence, listening, and writing practice. It only lacks a speaking part. When learning a language, speech practice is one thing you will definitely need. It could have been a perfect combination.

LLMs can have a huge impact on education. Teachers are engaging in LLM ethics discussions, and I hope this will lead to meaningful progress.