Australians Lost 338 Spoken Words a Day as AI Chatbots Threaten Human Listening
Updated
Updated · The Guardian · Oct 2
Australians Lost 338 Spoken Words a Day as AI Chatbots Threaten Human Listening
1 articles · Updated · The Guardian · Oct 2
Summary
338 fewer spoken words a day were recorded for Australians between 2005 and 2019, adding up to about 120,000 lost words per person, an oral historian warned.
Rapidly improving AI tools and chatbots promising faster replies and even “empathetic” listening may further displace human conversation, the report argues, deepening a decline already tied to more time online and remote work.
58,000 hours of recordings at the National Library of Australia’s oral history archive illustrate what is at stake — voices spanning First Nations testimony, refugee journeys, political change and vanished accents and occupations.
Listening to people outside one’s own circle builds empathy, understanding and wellbeing, the historian said, making the erosion of human listening a broader cultural loss rather than just a change in communication habits.