2020 2020 ELLAK International Conference
- 영어영문학과
- Hit1188
- 2023-02-17
The Age of AI and Machine Translation:
What Can Language, Literature, and Education Do?
- 2020 ELLAK International Conference -
When: December 17-18, 2020, Virtual Online Conference
In collaboration with the English Language and Literature Association of Korea (ELLAK), the Brain Korea 21 Program of SKKU Interaction English Studies co-hosted the 2020 ELLAK annual international conference, titled “The Age of AI and Machine Translation: What Can Language, Literature, and Education Do?” on December 17-19, 2020. As our educational research team’s BK21 project aims at developing interdisciplinary research and education to prompt productive conversations about how humans could co-exist with the developmental technologies that threaten human dominance, we designed special sessions to explore multiple possibilities of the future combining human and nonhuman intelligence.
In Special Session 1 “Humanities in the Age of AI and Machine Translation,” we invited notable international scholars whose range of interest includes posthumanism, cybernetics, neuroscience, brain processing, and machine reading. In Special Session 2 “Current Status of AI and Machine Translation,” experts working in the computer science industry and AI research labs shared their experiences and thoughts about the current problems and potential use of machine translation for language learning. They talked about how AI technology could be used for adult English language learners, deep learning, and the Korean-English, -Chinese, and-Japanese machine translation corpus project. In Special Session 3, the topic of “English Education in the Age of AI and Machine Translation” was covered with perspectives from Korean scholars who were working on innovative English education models using up-to-date digital humanities such as machine translation, corpus linguistics, and chatbot. Finally, in a roundtable session titled “The Age of AI, Critical Reflection and Prospect,” professors gathered to review the current conditions of AI in English literature and search for productive modes of interaction between human and nonhuman artificial intelligence.
Students and professors in the English department at SKKU actively contributed to the discussion on AI and machine translation’s implications from multiple angles. Prof. Hyesook Son chaired a panel on “English Studies in the Age of AI,” where the professors leading the BK21 program at SKKU (Prof. Yeonsik Jung, Prof. Won-Chung Kim, and Prof. Hanjung Lee) collaboratively discussed the mission of English studies in the face of critical challenges to its isolation from the real-world problems. Seven graduate students participated in the conference and presented on innovative topics such as “hypertime,” “tracing root,” and “post-anthropocentrism.” Our education research team will continue this search for a new form of interaction between humans and nonhuman technologies and environments creatively across multiple disciplines.