AI became my assistant to learning

AI became a trend stronger than expected, and soon, became part of my routine as a software developer.

As a skeptical millenial, I originally thought AI would become a trend that sooner or later will slow down. But become the opposite, and now here I am finding ways to make AI more present to my day to day routine.

As an autistic person, planning and considering fictional scenarios never became easier to do. I have the dream to travel to Japan, but travelling overseas might be too overwhelming and too much stimuli for a single person to handle.

I've been doing a year and a half studying the Japanese classes, and have already done a few weeks of Duolingo a few years back, but it was not enough to think how much effort I took to read hiragana, katakana and kanji to be stuck in a single place of boarding in a Tokyo airport. Or even, be inside of a konbini store and not to know if I want a bag or my food heated.

Caption: A image generated by Gemini of a woman nervous to answer a cashier from a konbini

After a few sessions understanding the potential of AI in my everyday life, I decided to take the opportunity to improve my Japanese lessons to a customizable session to create some fictional scenarios to understand how to read menus, plates, and even instructions. Since I'm a Brazilian-Japanese, it is mostly expected, due to my appearance, to a few Japanese folks think I'm fluent in the language.

So, let me show how I've done so far using the last few weeks exercising, let's see the following prompt:

Create a fictional situation of two people speaking in japanese. It should separate per speaker and the situation should be a person asking where is the airport.

Outcome

状況 (Situation): 空港で (At the Airport)

登場人物 (Characters):

• 田中 (Tanaka): Airport Staff

• スミス (Smith): Traveler

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スミス: すみません、国際線の出発ロビーはどこですか？ (Sumimasen, kokusaisen no shuppatsu robī wa doko desu ka?)

田中: 国際線ですね。あちらのエスカレーターで三階へ行ってください。 (Kokusaisen desu ne. Achira no esukarētā de sangai he itte kudasai.)

スミス: 三階ですね。ありがとうございます。あの、チェックインカウンターは何時に開きますか？ (Sangai desu ne. Arigatō gozaimasu. Ano, chekkuin kauntā wa nanji ni akimasu ka?)

田中: 出発の三時間前に開きます。搭乗券はお持ちですか？ (Shuppatsu no sanjikan mae ni akimasu. Tōjōken wa omochi desu ka?)

スミス: いいえ、まだです。あそこで手続きをします。 (Iie, mada desu. Asoko de tetsuzuki o shimasu.)

田中: 分かりました。あちらのカウンターでお願いします。 (Wakarimashita. Achira no kauntā de onegaishimasu.)

Adding the dialog to AI Studio using TTS (text-to-speech)

What I learned with AI

• Built a self exercise to practise listening
• Learned more about kanji, particles and katakana reading
• Check mostly common mannerisms in the japanese language
• Positions of objects and existence of objects
• Quizzes and cards can be generated to help memorize
• If you don't want to save the audio like I did, you can use any TTS tool to read in japanese for you

Downsides

• While building, you've noticed the voice changed to female, while the speaker generated by AI was someone called Smith. This is a nitpick from my part, but still did the job of learning.
• Iterating too many times with the Gemini and other AI chatbots, might become too lengthy to revise again later, might become too annoying to scroll back to a result you've liked
• Open too many possibilities, I highly recommend to focus on a single topic to not become overwhelmed (Neurodivergent folks will understand to not fall into a rabbit hole)
• Be aware of limits of paid services, in my case, everything was done using free resources

Conclusion

I do not intend to cancel my Japanese classes or suggest to replace your language teacher. I'm here to show the potential shown that AI can enhance your learning to fit your situation best. In this case, my desperation to understand anything related to konbinis and airports terrifies me until this day.

I also did a conversation related if I should drink water, carbonated water or tap water. It was really interesting as well.

I'm trying to get used to a trend that became more than a part of my professional life, but it is also becoming a part of my routine.

So, as long we're reasonable to estabilish limits how AI can automate and enhance our lives, we can do much more. Unfortunately, it still cannot clean dishes for me.