How Will AI Shape How We Study Languages?

Classics Club

Digital technology’s impact on language is not uniform; it may alter widely-spoken languages like English more than classical languages like Latin or Greek. Max Weil ‘26, Classics Club co-head, notes that he “wouldn’t trust it with the details,” as AI excels at grammatical basics, but falters with cultural connotations, which become increasingly essential when approaching texts detached from us by millennia. Technology can certainly scaffold the initial learning phase, but understanding Catullus’ invectives requires nuanced reading that only human-written commentaries can illuminate to a new reader. 

More concerning is technology’s effect on how we use language daily. Slang now evolves and spreads through algorithms rather than through conversation; many teenagers struggle with face-to-face communication, as their linguistic instincts are shaped more by screens. Though AI can generate adequate prose on demand, it also allows us to circumvent the laborious work of reading and writing—the work that builds genuine language facilities. 

AI’s reduction of experts’ need to memorize hard facts, however, does not diminish the importance of mastery in a given field; if anything, it amplifies it. Before AI, breakthroughs in fields required substantive knowledge across fields, yet now AI can buttress knowledge, but only for those with a foundational understanding of it. Language remains humanity’s most powerful tool for engaging with the world, and in an age when technology mediates so many interactions, linguistic competence—the ability to parse meaning, recognize nuance, and communicate with precision—must not fade into the backdrop.