Abstract:

The objective of the paper is to indicate that the expansion of the AI application in the field of education called into question the policy of multilingualism proclaimed by the EU. With the goal of expanding cooperation, tolerance and improved communication, the Recommendations R(82) and R (98) of the Council of Europe define multilingualism through the prism of protecting and developing Europe’s various linguistic and cultural heritage as a unique source of common spiritual enrichment, facilitated mobility of European citizens, as well as business cooperation and exchange of ideas, development of national linguistic-educational policies of foreign-language learning in institutional frameworks, and thus expanding multilingualism has been a condition of all conditions within the European Union since 2008.

On the other hand, economic aspects of sustainable development point to the necessity of every European mastering two foreign languages in addition to their native language. This goal is attainable through the modification of the language policy of the EU member-states and inclusion of two foreign languages into curricula in primary and secondary schools. Familiarity with languages and culture serves to transmit fundamental values of a society we are learning about through its language, and links are made based on the intersection of different European values.

The applied method is an analysis of the content of documents related to multilingualism policy and AI development strategies, both at the EU and Serbia national level.

The results show that, with the emergence and accelerated progress in the AI application in education, a minimum of two problems arise regarding the language policy of multilingualism: ending the need to know more than one language for the purpose of communication and, consequently, excluding language as a means of communication from the function of transmitting different cultural values. With increasingly rapid progress of the AI application in the field of translation, there is no need to know foreign languages, except for extremely specific cases, such as literary translation, poetry adaptation, translations from classical (old) languages and specialized translation. In the foreseeable future, the consequence of this is also the loss of jobs for translators and foreign language teachers. From the value aspect, multiculturalism is replaced by unison at least in two ways: first, artificial intelligence identically translates the same texts into different languages, without paying attention to small details. It simply serves for communication and not for communicative competence, beauty and specific cultural features of the language expression; on the other hand, as long as we have a dominant model of artificial intelligence that “learns under control” of humans (ANI – artificial narrow intelligence), the values are expanded of those societies capable of developing and improving such a model. Accordingly, there is no cultural exchange.

Having in mind Serbia’s orientation for the multilingualism policy and its efforts to apply it in practice, as well as the Republic of Serbia’s AI Development Strategy for 2025–2030, in which one of the stated goals is its application in education, the conclusion is potential contradictions of these documents and goals and implications that, although commented on the national example, actually have global significance.

Keywords:

European multilingualism policy, artificial intelligence (AI), AI application in education, Serbia.