"Steering the Conversation Back on Track Even When Going Off-Topic"... The Evolving 'AI Teacher'

[Anchor]

An artificial intelligence teacher has been developed to help foreigners practice Korean as if they were having a conversation with a real person. Even when given off-topic answers, it naturally steers the flow of the conversation back and keeps track of the designated learning progress.

Reporter Cho Hyeongjun from TJB has the story.

[Reporter]

We simulated a conversation with the AI, assuming the role of a foreigner who is not fluent in Korean.

[(I heard it's hard to make Korean friends these days. What do you think is the reason?) I think it's because the language doesn't communicate well.]

When we deliberately gave an unrelated response to the AI continuing the question,

[(It might be difficult to converse because you're not yet used to Korean. Which part is particularly hard?) I like the color red.]

The conversation, which was drifting off in an unexpected direction, is naturally brought back to the original topic.

[Ah, is that so? Red is a really pretty color. But I'm curious about what's difficult regarding the language aspect.]

This is the "Korean AI Teacher" developed by the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI).

It is designed to ensure that learners do not miss out on the learning content scheduled for the day, even while having free-flowing conversations.

The core feature is that no matter what the learner talks about, the AI naturally guides the conversation and takes them through the predetermined learning steps.

The research team divided roles between a small language model they developed and existing general-purpose AI like GPT, maximizing the strengths of each.

[Hwang Geum-ha / Principal Researcher, ETRI Language Intelligence Research Laboratory: By introducing a small language model, (we designed it) to utilize the knowledge learned from large language models like GPT so that the day's learning objectives can be successfully achieved.]

As a result, in an evaluation involving around 100 participants including foreign learners and language education experts, it showed a lower error rate and higher response appropriateness compared to existing language models.

The research team aims to commercialize it within the next one to two years, planning to develop the "Korean AI Teacher" into one that can teach not only speaking but also reading and writing.

(Video by Choi Woon-gi from TJB, Photo courtesy of the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute)

Cho Hyeongjun, TJB
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.