How Lelapa AI Is Saving African Languages
Every fourteen days a language dies. At this rate, it is predicted that within the coming century, half of the world’s 7,000 languages will be lost (National Geographic, 2012). Pelonomi Moiloa brings this alarming prediction to light in her TED talk, How AI Can Keep Disappearing Languages Alive. As the CEO of Lelapa AI, a company dedicated to effectively transcribing African languages, Pelonomi Moiloa has become a pioneer in the use of AI as a tool to keep languages alive.
In her speech, Pelonomi Moiloa describes language as more than just words and sounds. More specifically she says, “Language is a living archive,” which she describes as having developed over time between people and their shared experiences. Moiloa claims that language directly reflects a specified group’s way of life. As explained in the TED talk, losing a language is more than losing words, it is also losing a culture. With the help of AI, specialists can help prevent the rapid loss of languages. Pelonomi Moiloa took action by creating Lelapa AI in order to help keep languages alive.
Lelapa AI has a word error rate of 0.3 which is extremely low compared to the competing average of about 3. This is achievable because Moiloa values a deeper understanding of languages. Rather than a simple translation, she argues that it is necessary to have professionals who are able to understand the nuances and cultural backgrounds of languages. This is important because as Moiloa describes, language is the way humans are able to “communicate the internal world with the outside one.” Language is a part of people individually as much as it is a part of their culture as a whole. A loss of language becomes a loss of culture. This same idea can be applied to modern issues that Moiloa and many other Africans are facing.
Pelonomi Moiloa explains that the current prejudice against Africans makes it impossible to not compare to the experiences of their ancestors. Moiloa voices,
“You’ve had the flesh of our bodies. You’ve had the benefits of our labor. You’ve had the harvests of our soil from both below and above it. And you will not have our languages.”
In the past many peoples have lost their language, their culture and themselves, and so with the help of AI, Pelonomi Moiloa is fighting to protect her own as well as many others.