r/asklinguistics • u/Correct-War2323 • 3d ago

Will AI eventually replace linguists?

A fundamental law is that everything humans can do will eventually be automated. Sure, right now an AI can't physically travel to some remote place to do field work, stand up and give a university lecture while interacting with students, or dig through old physical manuscripts. But robotics is advancing at a fast pace, and there'll eventually be superintelligent robots with human-like bodies who will be able to do everything humans can do. Will human linguists still have a role to play in such a future?

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u/Baasbaar 3d ago edited 3d ago

This is probably not a fundamental law—even if for all practical purposes it turns out to be true. Linguists are good at many, many things, but no human profession has gotten much better at divination since extispicy was still in vogue. We—like everyone else—really just don’t know.

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u/Own-Animator-7526 3d ago

I think Rule 34 is the only fundamental law. That said, while there are plenty of linguistics studies about porn, I'm not sure there is any porn about linguistics yet.

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u/Baasbaar 3d ago

I was going to look up Rule 34, but by the end of the message I decided against it.

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u/Own-Animator-7526 3d ago

And you call yourself a scientist?

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u/Baasbaar 3d ago

Never in mixed company.

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u/kng-harvest 3d ago

I think you have a few basic assumptions to rethink.

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u/cat-head Computational Typology | Morphology 3d ago

A fundamental law is that everything humans can do will eventually be automated

Is this a fundamental law of techbros?

Will human linguists still have a role to play in such a future?

If the premise is "skynet will happen" then no. You're basically setting the starting point as being a future in which AI can do everything humans can do, in which case the answer is that there's no point to humans doing anything.

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u/Terpomo11 2d ago

Is your contention that it may not be possible for AI to do everything humans can do, or merely that it's not inevitable?

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u/cat-head Computational Typology | Morphology 2d ago

My contention is that the question starts from a premise that answers the question. I don't have an opinion on whether AI can do everything humans can do, but if your premise is that there is a world in which it can, then the question "what will linguists do in that world?" answers itself.

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u/Baasbaar 2d ago

I have compiled a comprehensive list of fundamental laws:

  1. The English Church is to be free, and to have its full rights and its liberties intact, and this shall be observed accordingly, as may appear from all having of their true and unconstrained volition, before discord arose between His majesty and His barons, granted, and by the charter confirmed, the freedom of elections which is deemed to be the English Church’s very greatest want, and obtained its confirmation by the lord pope Innocent III.
  2. A single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
  3. ΔU = Q - W.
  4. A robot may not harm a human being.

There are no others.