“Salaam il keshese!”

The Internet has delighted us with the news of a new invention – human thought has created artificial intelligence (AI). Interesting thing. Someone sees it as a funny toy, and someone scares people with prophecies of hypothetical terrible consequences from a monster released out. Well, specialists need to think things through, discuss and make the right decisions: within what legal framework is it possible to safely use the electronic brain for the benefit of humanity. And it’s very difficult, because with a useful thing like a microscope, you can make a discovery in microbiology and break the head of someone you’re talking to, if you’re really angry with him and you haven’t set limits for yourself before.

But right now, we’re interested in this miracle product of human genius for another reason. The idea that AI could be taught an indigenous language that is on the verge of extinction has already appeared in the media. It would seem a good way to preserve the language itself. After all, there is the World Seed Repository on Svalbard (Doomsday Repository). What prevents us from creating the same intellectual repository for languages that are on the verge of extinction? Reason is certainly present, so we create a guarantee of a possible revival of living speech. Using the almost limitless cloud storage of a smart robot to save the linguistic phenomenon – well, not bad…

But there is one “but”! Do you often review an album with family photos taken 30 years ago? For the author, for example, this happens very rarely when you need to move furniture or free up space for something. Then the photo albums accidentally end up in your hands, you automatically flip through a few pages, remember something, but immediately you hear from behind your back: “Well, what are you there, fell asleep? Come on!” – and the photos again go to the second or third plan, for which you are unlikely to ever find free time…

In short, there are concerns. As if a language begging for help and salvation hadn’t turned into an old trash chest forgotten in the attic with the help of AI. After all, every thing, like man, lives as long as it is needed by others and as long as someone uses it!

Given the “wise and humane” language policy of our state, we also have to look back at the possibility of direct harm from the use of AI. With a cold heart, they digitize a set of lexems into an electronic thesaurus, put syntax and stylistics into the program – and here you are, please: everyone can speak their language with a smart robot to their complete satisfaction. And perhaps tomorrow, our “wise leaders” will tell us: “Talk to your neural network!” instead of today: “Talk to your own home in the kitchen!” In this regard, we recall the situation described in one of L. Tolstoy’s novels, when a politician, languishing and going mad in solitary confinement without communication or books, is given a blackboard when asked to hand out his writing supplies. l. Do you want to write – please write, erase and write again… Go crazy at an accelerated pace!

Officials of all times are known for their soullessness and piety. Maybe, who remembers, there was such a precedent of using the achievements of scientific and technological progress in administration: you come to the place of presence with a complaint, you make an appointment with a high-level boss… Now, you think, now the boss will listen to me, accept the complaint, deal with it and give instructions to correct the mistakes made. Your turn comes, you walk into the specified office, and there… There’s a TV screen on a bracket under the ceiling, a smart supervisor looks at you from the screen, and next to it a camera that shoots you and transmits the image to the receiving functionary. He listens to your statement, nods his head, shows you where to put the letter, promises to deal with it on time, and… hangs up! And the use of such a novelty for ordinary people – with a goulkin’s nose!

Do you remember the joke that non-alcoholic beer is the first step towards a rubber woman? Saint-Exupery, the author of The Little Prince, claimed that the greatest luxury in the world is the luxury of human communication! The author would never want to talk in Tatar to a car instead of a friend from school or from the army, or a fellow countryman from his village. And about joking in the street with a Tatar girl, not with a robot, and there is no question at all!

Therefore, robots by robots, the electronic brain – of course, a good thing, but let us appreciate what Allah has given us – our native language, unseen threads that binds all Tatars into one whole. After all, say with your conscience – being somewhere in a foreign country, in a foreign country, and hearing Tatar speech behind your back, because the truth flashes in your soul some special joy of knowing. “Salam il kesheshe. Shin kaidan?” – you exclaim. The soul becomes warmer: “Oh, yours! A fellow countryman is near!” This is not a robot to meet!