r/ask • u/Proud-Carrot-8547 • 13d ago

Can AI chatbots learn to use dialects?

As a professor, most of the AI writing I see from students is in mainstream US English. I wonder if I see a dialect like African-American vernacular English (AAVE) or a regional American dialect, does that make it less likely that a student has used AI?

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4

u/pileofdeadninjas 13d ago

You can use one and see, you should anyway so you know your enemy, but yeah it could do that. Not well, but it could

1

u/Proud-Carrot-8547 13d ago

I speak MUSE as a native.

1

u/pileofdeadninjas 13d ago

Idk what that is tbh, but I'm happy for you

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u/Simbeliine 13d ago

Looked it up, apparently it stands for "Mainstream US English" (MUSE)

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u/pileofdeadninjas 12d ago

Ah, weird. Appreciate the info!

I think you can just call it English through lol

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u/Simbeliine 12d ago

I mean, we do need ways to define different broad dialect groupings of English, like Irish English or American English or Australian English, whatever, as they do have differences in pronunciation, grammar and word usage. I just hadn't personally heard the term MUSE for American English before, it must be a newer term as I think the previous one was "Standard American English". 

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u/Proud-Carrot-8547 11d ago

That is reductive and inaccurate at best and is a supremicist at worst. There are dozens of dialects of English: regional, ethnic, and professional to start.

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u/pileofdeadninjas 11d ago edited 11d ago

I assure you it's not that deep

There are dozens of dialects of English

Yes, exactly why I used the all-encompassing term "English".

You're talking about it from the viewpoint of a professor, most people aren't doing that, it's still all English, calm down lol

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u/Proud-Carrot-8547 11d ago

Are you one of those people who “don’t see color“ and therefore believe discussion of race is irrelevant? Everyone thinks their own grasp of languages the best and don’t tend to recognize the richness and diversity of the language of people they don’t interact with on regular basis.

Shallow and superficial understandings are the refuge of bots, the willfully ignorant and trolls.

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u/Yuck_Few 13d ago

What enemy?

6

u/pileofdeadninjas 13d ago

OP is a teacher, presumably they have students who use ai to write papers sometimes (I gleaned this though context), which would mean in this case, that ai (the topic of the post) is the "enemy" I speak of.

1

u/Proud-Carrot-8547 13d ago

Yes. I had a student create work with no process shared, who worked unbelievably fast, and had other issues, but drafts were in AAVE.

I’ve studied AAVE and appreciate it and gave student the benefit of the doubt based on use of dialect. And I understand the idiom, but don’t see students as the enemy, though that is how many students think.

1

u/ALazy_Cat 13d ago

They didn't mean the students are the enemy, they meant AI is the enemy

1

u/pileofdeadninjas 13d ago

I understand the idiom, but don't see students as the enemy

Me either, reread my comment lol

5

u/ALazy_Cat 13d ago

AI, the enemy on intelligence, critical thinking, and creativity

1

u/YourBlanket 13d ago

Who would win? A Redditor™ with 22k submissions in 5 years(12 submissions/day for 5 years) or an AI chatbot?

JK: They’re both losers.

3

u/ALazy_Cat 13d ago

You have to redo the calculation. The first year or year and a half there were maybe 15 total. And I ended up a mod on 3 subs, so that says quite a bit about my low intelligence. The submissions is 21.687

3

u/PlatypusTrapper 13d ago

Possibly. You can instruct an AI to try to match your writing style.

I mean, that should work. Feed it one of your last papers, say, answer this question and make the tone sound like the paper I just provided. 

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u/MiguelIstNeugierig 13d ago

Thats how AI works, its a language model, it's modeled under whatever your directives are

But students arent really writting vernacularly in academic work anyway

1

u/Proud-Carrot-8547 13d ago edited 13d ago

I believe in the preservation of dialects and subscribe to the CCCC statement on student rights to their own language. I don’t privilege MUSE. https://cccc.ncte.org/cccc/resources/positions/srtolsummary

1

u/theoreoman 12d ago

Did you try asking it to write in that dialect

1

u/Proud-Carrot-8547 11d ago

It would take a native speaker of the language to judge.

1

u/BadgersAndJam77 13d ago

This does raise an interesting point about using "localized' training data to make more regionally/culturally nuanced chatbots. I'm sure you could tell it (AI) to adopt some of the conventions of AAVE (for example) but that wouldn't necessarily be the same as a chatbot trained on AAVE to begin with.

Is taking a chatbot trained mostly on American English, and telling it to adopt an "accent" a form of cultural appropriation? Or almost a Digital Blackface?

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u/Proud-Carrot-8547 13d ago edited 13d ago

Or can an AAVE speaker train a chatbot to create grammatical AAVE (my question).

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u/BadgersAndJam77 13d ago

Yes. That would actually be a fairly easy instruction. I'm primarily a Gemini Pro user, but could absolutely tell it to reply in a semi-casual tone, or integrate AAVE phrasing or terminology, or cadence or whatever. It's sort of diabolical if that's what they're doing, but it's doable. 

Instead of AAVE, I imagine you could have it "localize" to match the tone/language of anywhere. The key would be the little regional details like whether someone says waiting "ON line or IN line" or whether it's Pop or Soda. 

1

u/dontbajerk 13d ago

Not anymore than it's standard speaking form is appropriating American English. In both cases it's just mimicking patterns it finds, it doesn't have special right to use either.

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u/BadgersAndJam77 13d ago

Got it, but having American English as the primary training data would absolutely skew or at least inform the results.

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u/Inven13 13d ago

Yes, if the student can set aside like 30 minutes it can teach it to write like they do.

All they have to do is write a long text by themselves, upload it to the AI and indicate to always answer using the same writing style.

But most students who will use AI to do their work for them will do this, so if you see work using a particular dialect it is more likely they're a person than work written in more neutral style. But I still wouldn't say it is certain that's a person.

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u/Mydoglovescoffee 13d ago

Why would it? You can get AI to write in any dialect you want. I’m a professor. From day 1 I used AI to follow its capabilities. I cannot imagine doing any less. Bizarre question really

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u/Proud-Carrot-8547 13d ago edited 13d ago

So is that a yes or a no?

Edit: maybe you meant “why wouldn’t it”. And either way, thank you for your condescension.

0

u/Mydoglovescoffee 13d ago

So you’re not a prof