The Role of Language in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
In the digital era, it is crucial to understand the role of language in our society and to explore the opportunities that new technologies create for it. Some neuroscientists and philosophers argue that language has lost its unique significance and is no longer the sole means of conveying thought.
In analytic philosophy, any meaning can be expressed through language. John Searle, in his book “Expression and Meaning,” calls this idea the “principle of expressibility.” According to this principle, anything that is implied can be said; any meaningful idea can be put into words. “The limits of my language,” says Ludwig Wittgenstein in the “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus,” “mean the limits of my world.”
Outside the closed space of logical positivism, the existence of boundaries in natural language—its limited capabilities—has long been recognized in both art and science. Psychology and linguistics acknowledge that language is an imperfect means of communication. As is well known, many of our thoughts can be expressed nonverbally, and only some of them find their embodiment in language. Notably, language often fails to express the specific experiences generated by art and cannot precisely convey the essence of abstract thought inherent in scientific consciousness. Language is a conduit for our thoughts and feelings, but it is not without flaws.
Artificial Intelligence and the Limits of Language
In the field of artificial intelligence, how a machine works is often inexplicable even to experts. In his essay “Will Artificial Intelligence Remain a Mystery Forever?” Aaron Bornstein, a neuroscientist at Princeton University, examines the problem in the context of artificial neural networks (complex programs modeled after the functioning of biological neural networks in living organisms): “No one knows exactly how they function. Therefore, no one can predict when they might fail.” This poses a danger to humans, for example, if a doctor relies solely on this technology to assess a patient’s condition and determine the risk of complications.
Bornstein notes that sometimes organizations choose less efficient but more understandable and transparent tools for data analysis; today, “even governments are beginning to express concern about the growing influence of predictions from these mysterious neural oracles.” Bornstein believes that the requirement to interpret the algorithm’s actions can be seen as yet another limitation that hinders a “pure” solution to the tasks at hand: when a machine derives meaning only from the initial data entered into the system. Everything else can distort the accuracy of the result. The human mind limits artificial intelligence.
Ryota Kanai, neuroscientist and CEO of the Tokyo startup Araya, is convinced that the main challenge lies in recognizing how machine intelligence makes decisions, and only then in translating this process into a language understandable to humans. In this regard, Kanai and his colleagues are trying to equip neural networks with metacognition (a language that would explain the processes occurring within the system), so that the machine itself can report on the state of its internal system.
The neuroscientist’s goal is to give the machine a voice: “We want these systems to explain how and why they do what they do.” This form of communication should be developed by the machines themselves. By receiving such feedback, scientists will be able to provide society with answers as to why machine intelligence made one decision over another. As for human language, Kanai says it will become an additional challenge in teaching automated information systems (AIS) to express themselves. (This, by the way, assumes that a computer model has a “self.”) Language is a challenge for artificial intelligence.
Elon Musk supports this idea. He states that the “human-machine” relationship should be taken to a higher level: to establish a direct “brain-computer” connection. He founded Neuralink, a company that plans to connect people to a system through which they can exchange thoughts without spending time and energy on words. As Christopher Markou, a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Law, describes in his essay, “this will make us capable of sharing thoughts, fears, hopes, and desires without resorting to written or spoken language.”
From the perspective of the humanities, Musk’s project offers something unsettling: instead of improving verbal communication, Musk proposes abandoning it as an inadequate means of social interaction. Generally, people support the improvement of communication networks designed for natural language transmission, but now they are being offered a utopian model of future techno-telepathy and the unbearable hopelessness of the present, in which language is seen as an obstacle to cooperation. Paradoxically and encouragingly, such criticism of language is successfully conducted in the very natural language that experts wish to abandon.
Language, Thought, and the Limits of Expression
In his essay “The Kekulé Problem,” American writer Cormac McCarthy examines the origins of language and is skeptical about its role in shaping consciousness: “In general, problems are well formulated using linguistic expressions, and language remains a convenient tool for explaining them. But the real process of thinking—regardless of the field of knowledge—is largely unconscious.” He defines the unconscious as “the animal control system.”
McCarthy sees language as a relatively recent invention and compares it to a virus that rapidly spread among humans millennia ago. His view of language is inadequate for several reasons. First, language is a human ability that developed through the gradual evolution of communication. It is hard to imagine that its emergence was caused by a “virus” or a sudden invention, someone’s unique creation. Second, for a thought to be nonverbal, it does not necessarily have to be unconscious. Finally, modern problems are extremely difficult to formulate and explain using natural language.
While language may not be the most perfect means of expressing thoughts, it is the most effective means of communication, having created modern societies, social institutions, states, and cultures. The resources of language allow us to establish social relationships and construct new forms of cooperation. It is a reliable and highly optimized form of communication, developed through gradual change. For millennia, language has been a tool of social interaction. This social interaction is in serious danger (authoritarianism, isolationism, conflicts…) because subjective experience (think of the limits of empathy when it comes to migrants) and knowledge (the complexity of the problem of global warming), which are captured in art and science, have far outstripped the expressive capacity of language.
The Importance of Language for Society, Art, and Science
Humanity depends on the ability of language to express complex new ideas and thus integrate them into culture. If people cannot recognize and begin to discuss emerging global problems, they will not be able to solve them collectively. Robert Burton, former associate director of the Department of Neurosciences at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center, emphasizes the complexity of this problem in his essay “Our World Is Smarter Than We Are,” published in Aeon magazine. An individual cannot stop climate change or prevent the growing inequality in income distribution. These goals can only be achieved through joint efforts. For cooperation, people need language.
Art shows that subjective experiences cannot always be conveyed through language. Artists are forced to deal with the limitations of language’s expressiveness. Scientists, in turn, understand that language is a basic tool, inadequate for conveying abstract ideas. Science tests the limits of abstract thinking; like art, it is not satisfied with verbal communication. To gain knowledge, scientists often abandon natural language. To achieve the desired aesthetic effect, artists resort to its alienation.
In the aptly titled essay “Science Has Outgrown the Human Mind and Its Limited Capacities,” Ahmed Alkhateeb, a molecular biologist at Harvard Medical School, says that in the era of big data, the human mind simply cannot perform the number of operations that a machine can easily handle. But the problem is that language is the tool society uses to accumulate knowledge and affirm beauty.
Abandoning language isolates art and science. They become inaccessible to the entire human community. Without language, art and science lose their cultural significance and political influence: art no longer touches people’s hearts, and science finds it harder to enlighten society. When art and science are on the periphery, society becomes defenseless against complex challenges and undermines its cultural safeguards. Today’s dominant narrative is the progress of science and the democratization of art, but global problems require even more active human participation in solving scientific, moral, and aesthetic dilemmas. Language is one of the key tools capable of achieving this goal.
Finding Balance: Expanding the Boundaries of Language
It is important to strike a balance between expanding the boundaries of language and using it as a tool for communication and cooperation. For artists and scientists, it is especially important to be able to express even the most complex ideas in language; otherwise, they will not be understood by society. In the essay “To Solve the Climate Problem, Tell Better Stories,” Michael Segal, editor-in-chief of Nautilus, argues that science needs narratives to become part of culture. Narratives can help humanity solve global problems. In the popular science article “Earth’s Caretakers,” Kerry Arnold reveals this potential of narratives by reviewing research on how indigenous peoples create myths containing omens of natural disasters. Today, people can compose similar texts based on expert knowledge of the world. Language is the best tool for this task.
For example, Timothy Snyder, professor of history at Yale University, in his book “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century,” a New York Times bestseller in 2017, examines the history of the twentieth century and draws conclusions about the causes that led to the rise of authoritarian regimes. Moving from the general to the particular, to the individual, he explains that each of us must take responsibility for maintaining peace in modern society. He urges readers to take responsibility for the state of society, to defend institutions, to remember professional ethics, to believe in the truth, and to fight manifestations of tyranny. The language of his book is persuasive and clear. Such a narrative can help solve complex social problems, including environmental protection, using categories of language accessible to everyone.
Ultimately, art and science create critically important knowledge and invaluable experience, but often cannot reflect them in language. As Wittgenstein said, “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” This silence can have sad consequences for humanity. It is crucial to break it. Art and science must speak to the public and thus expand the boundaries of language and culture.