The Dawn of the Human-Machine Era: A forecast of new and emerging language technologies

New language technologies are coming, thanks to the huge and competing private investment fuelling rapid progress; we can either understand and foresee their effects, or be taken by surprise and spend our time trying to catch up. This report scketches out some transformative new technologies that are likely to fundamentally change our use of language. Some of these may feel unrealistically futuristic or far-fetched, but a central purpose of this report - and the wider LITHME network - is to illustrate that these are mostly just the logical development and maturation of technologies currently in prototype. But will everyone benefit from all these shiny new gadgets? Throughout this report we emphasise a range of groups who will be disadvantaged and issues of inequality. Important issues of security and privacy will accompany new language technologies. A further caution is to re-emphasise the current limitations of AI. Looking ahead, we see many intriguing opportunities and new capabilit ...showmore