languages are wonders did you know that
are there are over 6,000 languages
spoken in the world today there are
40,000 dialects it’s with their own
characteristics sound structure and
vocabulary that we use language to
communicate communicate feelings
communicate ideas and knowledge
languages can also be a barrier behavior
between us because if you go to an a
different country there are many
foreigners here if you go to a different
country where you don’t speak the
language you may feel like you are deaf
mute totally disabled this is a serious
disability if you are fleeing from a
situation think about the Syrian doctor
that is fleeing from Syria and going
into Germany her knowledge her doctor
degree is newly fight when she migrates
to German and what does that mean to her
and her family can she offer to learn a
new language that takes many many years
to to to come all this language barrier
can create a gap between people culture
and create misunderstanding that leads
to conflicts and even world some of us
learn a new language out of happy
Italian for example is a very popular
language some people dream of going to
Italy and being able to order pasta with
truffles in Italian some of us learn out
of necessity and some of us learn
because it will bring more opportunities
to their business I’m an engineer I came
to Japan 14 years ago to do my PhD in
artificial intelligence AI Icelandic is
my first language Dane is my second
English is my third term min’ is my
fourth and so I had done my share of
language learning before I came to Japan
and took on Japanese it turned out to be
quite a talents MSA the classes taught
here at the University where I was
learning Japanese as well they did not
work really well the private classes
that I took they were a little bit
better but they were expensive now
self-studying is heart this drove me
absolutely crazy and I started getting
into this problem of language learning
as I was in great position to to show
through my scientific research here at
this fine University where I stand today
I was mainly concerned with two
questions first how our language is
taught today I lived into all kinds of
different methods but all the possible
books that I could find in the bookstore
I try it out podcasts Rosita stole the
paper method
self studying of course immersed
learning and so forth the second
question that I was interested in how
does a human mind work when we are
learning languages so I read all the
possible research that I could find on
this topic as well and try it actually
quite a lot of it on myself and some of
my peers what I found out is that
there’s a huge gap between how languages
are taught today and how the brain
functions so once I completed my PhD in
artificial intelligence and speech
recognition in 2009 I could not stop
thinking about this gap for scientist
there’s nothing more exciting than an
unresolved problem of grand proportions
this is why instead of getting a real
job like my father would call it and
have a job at Google or Goldman Sachs
I decided to focus all my time on this
unresolved problem of language learning
I made it my own full-time job I had no
money and have no office so for the next
eight months I spent in a park called
Yoyogi beautiful park that is here in
Tokyo there I was alone in nature and
really really far out of my comfort zone
and my father was kind enough to pay my
bills and I accepted that because I knew
I was on something very very big
something that could possibly
revolutionize language learning for good
for everyone else so this gap
what is this gap between the brain and
how languages are taught today the way
language is a tour today is by giving up
exercises that are made to build one on
top of the other the problem is that the
teacher cannot know if the student is
ready for the next exercise because the
teacher does not know how much is
remembered of the one preceding it and
it’s necessary base so it easily becomes
confusing for the student and is
inefficient the reason being that the
forgetting curve is not taking into
account in order to teach languages
successfully we need to know not only
how the brain
learn but also take into account how it
forgets the for thething curve was
discovered in 1885 over 100 years ago
and is the key to this and it is perhaps
best understood by giving an example I
met a person here in the networking
session 10 minutes ago and I already
forgot his name
I may have remembered this person’s name
for 30 seconds and then it was gone
completely gone out of my memory however
if I would recall that name within those
30 seconds something magical happens
what happens is that the memory for the
name transfers from being 30 seconds
into two minutes and if I do that I can
so I will try to recall that name within
those two minutes especially at the end
then I would remember it for 10 minutes
if I repeat that it becomes 2 hours 2
hours become 15 minutes 15 hours and
fifteen hours become a day a day becomes
three days three days becomes a week
week becomes a month and so forth this
is called spaced repetition and it uses
the forgetting curve so the problem is
that when learning a language in the
traditional way it is very hard for the
teacher or the student to manage what to
learn how and when but if we apply
artificial intelligence to schedule the
learning process we change the game
because it can remind us not just to
learn words since learning words is just
the beginning of language acquisition
but instead managing all the other
elements and optimize it for each and
every step systematically activating
listening reading writing and speaking
skills all through certain exercises
that are all connected together then we
can indeed bridge the
gap after eight months in the park the
solution came to me a magical moment
where I connected all the dots all the
puzzles came into one completed like a
thunder that struck through my head the
moment when I finally solved the riddle
I knew the next step was to create a
mobile app so that a person could have
artificial intelligence in her pocket
all the time aiding with the learning it
would be valuing and activating skills
in the brain one by one on a world level
and making sure that skill is kept fresh
in memory and move on to more complex
skills at the very moment when the
easier still had been mastered all
through an app this I could not do on my
own so I founded a company
I got investors to join us I created a
team of great specialists to create this
new learning concept we spent the next
five years on developing the app
solution using what had become clear to
me through deep understanding of how the
human works and how it associates memory
to listening reading writing and
speaking after creating the map or the
model that connects the learning process
all that was needed was to pick the
right material and put that through the
learning model material that is not
general but tailor-made for each user
and his and her needs in order to make
the best use of the students time as a
test to prove the concept we spent quite
a while tailoring our learning method
this advanced delivery system to about
non language proficiency test called
TOEIC that millions of people take every
year throughout the world there’s a
large study that was done here in Japan
that shows that it takes about two
hundred twenty-five hours
to improve hundred points on TOEIC for
people who are around five hundred
toilet level the study included over
thousand company employees and the
teacher was a native English teacher we
did a similar test got employees from
big Japanese companies to go through our
online program and it turned out that
our method was five times more efficient
than the baseline five times more
efficient than a native English teacher
by touch
we have done it found a way to
revolutionize language learning imagine
instead of going to a one-hour class all
you need to do is to spend 12 minutes in
the app or if you choose to spend one
hour in the app you learn five times
more your mind starts racing when a
wreath of this pick can be created by
team of 12 people what can be done to
revolutionize education in the future by
applying AI to change the delivery
system and make it fit better with our
brain not just for languages but for
everything today we are up and running
the Japanese large Japanese companies
that are using our system to teach their
managers and directors to become fluent
in English and we are preparing to bring
in hundreds of thousands of people from
these companies through our program so
we have a lot of work ahead of us
because I won’t rest until we have
taught millions perhaps billions of
people to communicate better teach the
Sirian the Syrian dr. German you may say
that I’m a dreamer but I’m not the only
one said John Lennon when he asked us to
imagine no barriers between countries
and people I think it’s a great dream
one
that I’m ready to put my life and
knowledge to realize thank you
[Applause]
are there are over 6,000 languages
spoken in the world today there are
40,000 dialects it’s with their own
characteristics sound structure and
vocabulary that we use language to
communicate communicate feelings
communicate ideas and knowledge
languages can also be a barrier behavior
between us because if you go to an a
different country there are many
foreigners here if you go to a different
country where you don’t speak the
language you may feel like you are deaf
mute totally disabled this is a serious
disability if you are fleeing from a
situation think about the Syrian doctor
that is fleeing from Syria and going
into Germany her knowledge her doctor
degree is newly fight when she migrates
to German and what does that mean to her
and her family can she offer to learn a
new language that takes many many years
to to to come all this language barrier
can create a gap between people culture
and create misunderstanding that leads
to conflicts and even world some of us
learn a new language out of happy
Italian for example is a very popular
language some people dream of going to
Italy and being able to order pasta with
truffles in Italian some of us learn out
of necessity and some of us learn
because it will bring more opportunities
to their business I’m an engineer I came
to Japan 14 years ago to do my PhD in
artificial intelligence AI Icelandic is
my first language Dane is my second
English is my third term min’ is my
fourth and so I had done my share of
language learning before I came to Japan
and took on Japanese it turned out to be
quite a talents MSA the classes taught
here at the University where I was
learning Japanese as well they did not
work really well the private classes
that I took they were a little bit
better but they were expensive now
self-studying is heart this drove me
absolutely crazy and I started getting
into this problem of language learning
as I was in great position to to show
through my scientific research here at
this fine University where I stand today
I was mainly concerned with two
questions first how our language is
taught today I lived into all kinds of
different methods but all the possible
books that I could find in the bookstore
I try it out podcasts Rosita stole the
paper method
self studying of course immersed
learning and so forth the second
question that I was interested in how
does a human mind work when we are
learning languages so I read all the
possible research that I could find on
this topic as well and try it actually
quite a lot of it on myself and some of
my peers what I found out is that
there’s a huge gap between how languages
are taught today and how the brain
functions so once I completed my PhD in
artificial intelligence and speech
recognition in 2009 I could not stop
thinking about this gap for scientist
there’s nothing more exciting than an
unresolved problem of grand proportions
this is why instead of getting a real
job like my father would call it and
have a job at Google or Goldman Sachs
I decided to focus all my time on this
unresolved problem of language learning
I made it my own full-time job I had no
money and have no office so for the next
eight months I spent in a park called
Yoyogi beautiful park that is here in
Tokyo there I was alone in nature and
really really far out of my comfort zone
and my father was kind enough to pay my
bills and I accepted that because I knew
I was on something very very big
something that could possibly
revolutionize language learning for good
for everyone else so this gap
what is this gap between the brain and
how languages are taught today the way
language is a tour today is by giving up
exercises that are made to build one on
top of the other the problem is that the
teacher cannot know if the student is
ready for the next exercise because the
teacher does not know how much is
remembered of the one preceding it and
it’s necessary base so it easily becomes
confusing for the student and is
inefficient the reason being that the
forgetting curve is not taking into
account in order to teach languages
successfully we need to know not only
how the brain
learn but also take into account how it
forgets the for thething curve was
discovered in 1885 over 100 years ago
and is the key to this and it is perhaps
best understood by giving an example I
met a person here in the networking
session 10 minutes ago and I already
forgot his name
I may have remembered this person’s name
for 30 seconds and then it was gone
completely gone out of my memory however
if I would recall that name within those
30 seconds something magical happens
what happens is that the memory for the
name transfers from being 30 seconds
into two minutes and if I do that I can
so I will try to recall that name within
those two minutes especially at the end
then I would remember it for 10 minutes
if I repeat that it becomes 2 hours 2
hours become 15 minutes 15 hours and
fifteen hours become a day a day becomes
three days three days becomes a week
week becomes a month and so forth this
is called spaced repetition and it uses
the forgetting curve so the problem is
that when learning a language in the
traditional way it is very hard for the
teacher or the student to manage what to
learn how and when but if we apply
artificial intelligence to schedule the
learning process we change the game
because it can remind us not just to
learn words since learning words is just
the beginning of language acquisition
but instead managing all the other
elements and optimize it for each and
every step systematically activating
listening reading writing and speaking
skills all through certain exercises
that are all connected together then we
can indeed bridge the
gap after eight months in the park the
solution came to me a magical moment
where I connected all the dots all the
puzzles came into one completed like a
thunder that struck through my head the
moment when I finally solved the riddle
I knew the next step was to create a
mobile app so that a person could have
artificial intelligence in her pocket
all the time aiding with the learning it
would be valuing and activating skills
in the brain one by one on a world level
and making sure that skill is kept fresh
in memory and move on to more complex
skills at the very moment when the
easier still had been mastered all
through an app this I could not do on my
own so I founded a company
I got investors to join us I created a
team of great specialists to create this
new learning concept we spent the next
five years on developing the app
solution using what had become clear to
me through deep understanding of how the
human works and how it associates memory
to listening reading writing and
speaking after creating the map or the
model that connects the learning process
all that was needed was to pick the
right material and put that through the
learning model material that is not
general but tailor-made for each user
and his and her needs in order to make
the best use of the students time as a
test to prove the concept we spent quite
a while tailoring our learning method
this advanced delivery system to about
non language proficiency test called
TOEIC that millions of people take every
year throughout the world there’s a
large study that was done here in Japan
that shows that it takes about two
hundred twenty-five hours
to improve hundred points on TOEIC for
people who are around five hundred
toilet level the study included over
thousand company employees and the
teacher was a native English teacher we
did a similar test got employees from
big Japanese companies to go through our
online program and it turned out that
our method was five times more efficient
than the baseline five times more
efficient than a native English teacher
by touch
we have done it found a way to
revolutionize language learning imagine
instead of going to a one-hour class all
you need to do is to spend 12 minutes in
the app or if you choose to spend one
hour in the app you learn five times
more your mind starts racing when a
wreath of this pick can be created by
team of 12 people what can be done to
revolutionize education in the future by
applying AI to change the delivery
system and make it fit better with our
brain not just for languages but for
everything today we are up and running
the Japanese large Japanese companies
that are using our system to teach their
managers and directors to become fluent
in English and we are preparing to bring
in hundreds of thousands of people from
these companies through our program so
we have a lot of work ahead of us
because I won’t rest until we have
taught millions perhaps billions of
people to communicate better teach the
Sirian the Syrian dr. German you may say
that I’m a dreamer but I’m not the only
one said John Lennon when he asked us to
imagine no barriers between countries
and people I think it’s a great dream
one
that I’m ready to put my life and
knowledge to realize thank you
[Applause]
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