Am I missing something?

Am I missing something, or are we getting carried away with this?

I came across a DW video asking whether it still makes sense to learn a foreign language now that AI can translate for us.

My first thought was: do we still need to exercise?

The telly has a remote. Food arrives at the door. Amazon delivers almost anything, including the new telly. If we keep removing reasons to get up, walk somewhere or carry something, do we eventually decide there’s no point having muscles?

Of course we don’t. We understand that the effort itself has value.

So why are we so ready to question the value of learning when a machine can produce the result for us?

Learning a language gives you more than a translated sentence. You struggle, make mistakes, understand a joke you would have missed before. You speak to someone in their own language and see their reaction. You discover something about how other people live and think.

There is value in becoming someone who can do that.

To be fair to DW, the video explores these reasons too. But the opening question touches something that increasingly frustrates me about the wider AI conversation: how quickly we jump from “technology can help us do this” to “is there any point learning it?”

I believe AI is one of the biggest changes we will experience in our lifetimes. It is already changing work, businesses and everyday decisions. Some people are seeing it directly. Others are still hearing about it from a distance.

And yes, there are difficult questions about jobs, education and what comes next. We need to take those seriously.

Previous generations faced enormous changes too. The printing press, machinery in the fields, computers in offices. Each changed what people needed to do and opened up possibilities that were difficult to imagine beforehand.

AI brings its own challenges, on a scale we are still trying to understand. I’m excited by what it makes possible. That is exactly why I want us to put more energy into helping people use it well.

Show a young person how AI can help them practise a language. Help a small business owner understand something they previously couldn’t afford expert help with. Give people practical ways to learn, build and take part.

Because I worry about what younger generations hear when we repeatedly question whether skills are still worth learning. Some will hear that the effort is pointless before they have even had a chance to discover what they enjoy.

That makes me angry. It also makes me want to contribute something more useful.

I want better tools and more capable people. I want us to stay curious, make mistakes and keep discovering what we can do.

Let’s use the technology to take our curiosity further.

I’d love to hear what you’ve learnt recently, and whether AI helped you get started.