AI and IELTS

‘I use ChatGPT to get feedback on my writing, is that ok?’

‘I learn band 9 collocations – I get assistance from ChatGPT.’ 

With IELTS, these kinds of questions and comments are becoming more and more frequent. Some people are ready to accept whatever AI tells them – especially when it gives them positive reinforcement and uses all the right jargon:

• Me: ‘I think you’ll score Band 6 for this essay.’
• AI User: ‘Well, ChatGPT told me it’s C2 so I don’t agree.’

Others seem to want confirmation of AI’s expertise and its ability to not only give helpful feedback but also to produce materials. So, this is my answer.

THE AI HYPE

Those promoting the use of AI would like us to believe that it is the ultimate expert with ‘PhD-level capabilities’ in any subject, and that it will inevitably replace many humans in the workplace. At its core, AI is an attempt to automate a task so, to believe the hype, we need to believe that any task can be automated. This may work with tasks that are repetitive and which can be reduced to a series of clearly defined steps, but this is not the case with creative or cognitive tasks, where there is no single ‘right’ answer.

Even in the field of mathematics, where we do tend to think in terms of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ answers, AI has been shown to have inconsistent success. In a recent interview in The Atlantic, mathematician Terence Tao says that chatbots have improved but that they lack creativity and ‘make subtle mistakes’.  Maths is far from my own area of expertise, so let’s look at the impact that ‘subtle mistakes’ can have on language learning and practice.

PROBLEMS WITH AI TRANSCRIPTS

The transcripts produced for videos on social media provide a rich source of these problems. The autogenerated captions often contain word and tense changes. For example, in one video, we hear

• ‘classic managed out playbook’ but the words on the screen say ‘Classic man Playbook’
• ‘They can’t fire me for refusing unpaid work’ is changed to ‘they can’t fire me with losing unpaid work’.
• ‘competence’ is changed to ‘confidence’
• ‘I refused’ is changed to ‘I refuse’; ‘they tried’ to ‘they try’ and so on

Although there are ‘subtle’ differences between the way the words were spoken and the way they were transcribed, the effect the changes have on meaning is far from subtle. I may be overly aware having worked on speaking and listening for so long, but I find the inaccurate transcripts a huge distraction and the impact this will have for language learners concerns me.

PROBLEMS WITH AI AUDIO

Similarly, when AI is used to generate audio, it is usually unnaturally rapid and often applies inappropriate rhythm, word stress, and intonation, demonstrating that it cannot understand the overall meaning or context.

WORD STRESS

To use an example from an early lesson of my speaking book, the word ‘present’ has a different word stress depending on the context and meaning (e.g. a PREsent is ‘a gift’ but ‘preSENT’ is a verb meaning to give or provide something). In one lesson, I share some examples of AI audio, where the incorrect word stress creates confusing sentences. For example:

This word stress sounds like, ‘The future is going to be one that gifts many challenges.’

RHYTHM AND INTONATION PROBLEMS

Rhythm and intonation can be seen as the equivalent of punctuation in writing – they help us to hear the commas, full stops, question marks and exclamation marks. However, again, AI doesn’t understand the audio it produces. In one video, the creator was trying to sell a health product using automated AI audio, which changed, ‘You want to live right’ to ‘You want to live, right?’ Again, the supposed ‘subtle’ changes have a big impact on meaning.

AI AND FEEDBACK

As these examples show, AI cannot understand context or meaning. Consequently, it can’t give meaningful feedback on your speaking or writing. It can only show you what feedback looks like. It can pretend and claim to act like an examiner, but it can’t actually perform the functions of an examiner.

AI IS NOT THE EXPERT – IT IS THE USER WHO MUST ALREADY HAVE THIS EXPERTISE

For me, the main issue is that it takes an expert (whether that’s an expert mathematician, an expert speaker, or an expert writer) to identify these inconsistencies and then take the necessary steps to address them. Arguably, AI’s usefulness is fully dependent on and limited to the expertise of the user. This means that, for the unskilled and unaware, it can do far more harm than good.

You’ll hear me use the term ‘unskilled and unaware’ again when I look at the problems in test writing.

In the meantime, my Key to IELTS eBooks aim to make you an expert on your writing and speaking, helping you to understand the main issues and barriers stopping you from reaching Bands 7, 8 and even Band 9.

🗝 Get the Keys to IELTS here 🗝

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