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A linguist calls for diversifying languages on internet

By Zaina Al-Ayoub KUWAIT, March 5 (KUNA) -- A linguist, at a Linguistics Studies Biennial Conference (LSBC) at Kuwait University Tuesday, called for diversifying languages in programming field to make room for other languages to flourish.
Dr. Teresa Lynn, of Mohammad bin Zayed University, UAE, was giving a lecture on "Safeguarding our languages in the AI revolution" examining "the role of linguistic studies in ensuring that our languages are not forgotten" during the emergence of Generative AI platforms.
Dr. Lynn pointed out English as being the predominant language used in programming systems, labeling them as "Anglo-centric." "In bilingual societies, the priority and preference go to digitally supported languages," English, she added.
English would be receiving the most attention, while other languages would be threatened. Dr. Lynn championed the idea of diversity in programming fields.
In order to safeguard other languages from the risk of neglect and underdevelopment, Dr. Lynn recommended "moving tech companies away" from English majority speaking countries. She championed the idea of diversity in computer programming.
Dr. Karim Ibrahim (Gulf University of Science and Technology, Kuwait) talked about "Using AI classifiers to Identify AI-assisted plagiarism: The Terminator versus the Machines," a comparative study on the detection of AI-generated texts with plagiarism detection platforms.
Plagiarism checker websites and programs cannot differentiate between what is written by humans and what is generated by AI, which "is becoming more humanlike in generating texts," according to Dr. Ibrahim.
He mentioned the integration of AI-Detection software into plagiarism checkers to "effectively discriminate between human-written texts and AI-generated texts." Dr. Ibrahim stated that the use of Generative AI in academia is a violation to academic integrity.
AI cannot be rejected, therefore proper training in generative-AI is the key for ethical and responsible utilization in classrooms and other workspaces, concluded Dr. Ibrahim AI-Detection software programs vary in detection accuracy, with the highest degree of accuracy being 89 percent (OpenAI), while other programs are as low as 40 percent accuracy in detecting AI-generated texts.
The two-day event was organized by Kuwait University and Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences (KFAS), featuring lectures and workshops by visiting professors and local researchers. (end) za