This Chiapas teacher of his Tzotzil language has a star pupil: ChatGPT

An pedagogue successful the confederate Mexican authorities of Chiapas is bridging the spread betwixt Indigenous language and artificial quality by teaching Tzotzil to ChatGPT.

Andrés ta Chikinib, a 29-year-old teacher and poet, had an amused grin connected his look arsenic helium described his antithetic pupil.

Chikinib says helium wants to guarantee that the connection of much than 400,000 radical successful Chiapas has a beingness successful the integer satellite and is accessible to aboriginal generations. (Instagram)

“ChatGPT has go different student, inquisitive and persistent, demanding clarity and coherence,” said the nonmigratory of Zinacantán, a municipality of 45,000 successful the Chiapas highlands predominantly inhabited by Tzotzil Maya.

Chikinib has spent astir a decennary promoting Tzotzil literacy — contempt lone learning to work and constitute successful his ain lingua astatine property 19.

A deficiency of schoolroom materials led him to a caller solution: “As a Tzotzil connection teacher, I couldn’t find immoderate worldly to share, truthful I started creating it myself. But this enactment takes a batch of time.”

Chikinib began by feeding ChatGPT — an online, AI-powered chatbot — his dialect’s vocabulary, grammatical structures and halfway rules. He deliberately avoided immoderate translations into Spanish.

He said he’s been utilizing the Tzotzil dialect spoken successful his ain colony oregon region. Tzotzil is made up of respective chiseled determination dialects that tin disagree successful pronunciation, vocabulary and immoderate grammar; intelligibility betwixt them varies.

He said ChatGPT responded not lone by repeating what was taught, but by asking questions, recognizing linguistic patterns and adjacent catching roots unsocial to Tzotzil.

His extremity extends acold beyond novelty, nor is it to construe Tzotzil into Spanish oregon make a structured learning model.

Rather, helium wants to guarantee that the connection — spoken by much than 400,000 radical successful Chiapas — has a beingness successful the integer world, is accessible to young radical and aboriginal generations, and gets the aforesaid respect arsenic it does successful the community.

However, it is unclear precisely however his enactment volition payment others successful the abbreviated term. Interactions with ChatGPT mostly amended the AI’s show lone wrong that user’s league oregon discourse — unless the information is specifically utilized to retrain underlying models oregon converted into face-to-face teaching materials.

“If we don’t share, however tin we request organization respect oregon visibility?” Chikinib said, responding to critics who question digitizing languages — specified arsenic José Daniel Ochoa Nájera, a linguist successful Chiapas astatine the State Center for Indigenous Languages, Art, and Literature (CELAL).

Ochoa warned of a “linguistic colonialism,” successful which “some languages” get expanded done integer technology, portion others “remain marginalized.”

“AI tin archer our stories, yes,” helium added. “But who decides which stories and however they are told? Technology tin beryllium a instrumentality oregon a dispossession.”

According to the latest figures from Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), Mexico boasts 68 Indigenous languages (encompassing 364 variants) spoken by immoderate 7 cardinal people. Mexico is among the apical 10 nations globally with the astir Indigenous languages, ranking 2nd successful Latin America down Brazil.

About 6% of Mexico’s colonisation of 132 cardinal tin talk Nahuatl, Tzeltal, Maya, Zapotec, Tzotzil, Mixtec oregon different Indigenous language. Still, connection nonaccomplishment remains a superior concern, arsenic astir 300 Indigenous languages person disappeared historically successful Mexico. The planetary complaint is astir 25 languages disappearing annually.

With reports from MVS Noticias, López-Dóriga Digital, Radio Formula and Diario de Yucatán