AI & Multilingualism

We have been investigating the benefits and challenges of AI on multilingualism on the Internet, experimenting with ChatGPT.

Two experiments were conducted, the first one focused the ethical concern of AI hallucinations in the context of false bibliographical references and the second one focused the impressive capacities of ChatGPT for multilingualism, furthermore we contribute to Elon University report on The Impact of Artificial Intelligence by 2040:

• “ChatGPT: from Artificial Wisdom to a serious ethical problem with bibliographical data“
• “Comment ChatGPT traite le multilinguisme: entre émerveillements et hallucinations”, Table Ronde « Intelligence Artificielle (IA), langues, traduction automatique et représentation des connaissances »  dans la Journée d’études en communication internationale et interculturelle  sur le thème : « Regards croisés sur la Communication internationale et interculturelle à l’heure de la renégociation des pouvoirs », Université du Québec à Montréal, 28 avril 2023. Vidéo (12mn.), PPT, DOC
• ICV Symposium AI and Citizenship with a conference “AI & Multilingualism: between dream and nightmare“. Video (10 mn, in French), PPT (in French)
• Contribution to Elon University report on The Impact of Artificial Intelligence by 2040 focusing in particular “multilingualism assisted by IA powered translation tools as lingua franca of the Internet“.
• Contribution on IA and translation for Imagining the Digital Future Center at Elon University’ s last survey “Being Human in 2035” on how the evolving relationship between humans and artificial intelligence tools might influence the essence of being human. 4/2025
• Contribution to Forum francophone sur la gouvernance du numérique et de l’IA, Genève, 4 -5 juillet 2025. Introduction à l’atelier 1 « Comment mettre en place des mécanismes de mesure de la pluralité culturelle et linguistique des contenus en ligne ? » du Panel thématique « diversité et découvrabilité : quelle gouvernance pour promouvoir et rendre davantage visibles les contenus francophones (nationaux/locaux) en ligne ? » PPT – VIDEO (13 mn)
• Contribution to preparatory meeting for the French-speaking multi-stakeholder workshop for open, inclusive language models rooted in linguistic and cultural diversity. New York – December 16, 2025. PPT – VIDEO (3mn) (in French)

The relation between AI (Artificial Intelligence) and IL (Information Literacy) has been also analyzed:

• “IL vs. AI: Information Literacy vs Artificial Intelligence”, 7/2020 – Observatory of Linguistic and Cultural Diversity on the Internet – http://funredes.org/ALFIN/AI%20vs%20IA.EN.docx
• Spanish version published in “AI vs. IA: Alfabetización informacional vs. Inteligencia Artificial”, IX Seminario Hispano-Brasileño de Investigación en Información, Documentación y Sociedad 2020, 13-15 octubre 2020 – http://funredes.org/ALFIN/AI vs IA.ES.docx
• and in “Información, ciencia y sociedad en tiempos de posverdad”, A. Cuevas-Cerveró, E. Simeão, F. C. Paletta (Coord.), PP 99-127, ISBN: 978-65-88640-26-5, 2021 – https://eprints.ucm.es/id/eprint/67906/

It is important and interesting to highlight that this text has been written prior to the successful explosion of IA agents; this does not downgrade the observations and recommandations made, in particular on the risk of the lack of interpretability of the results of IA processes, and what that implies in terms of bias identification, and obviously on the main conclusion advocating for the huge and versatile requirements for Information Literacy.