AI, Society and Lexicography

Artificial Intelligence is no longer a distant concept—it’s a fast-evolving tool that is becoming part of everyday life. But what exactly is AI? How can we interact with it meaningfully? And what are its limits and challenges? This presentation opens with a short, accessible introduction to AI: how it works, how it learns from data, and how we can best use it—without overestimating its abilities.

From there, the focus turns to a concrete example: how AI is transforming the world of lexicography, the science behind dictionaries. Each era has produced its own language tools, shaped by the technology and needs of the time. In today’s digital society, traditional dictionaries are no longer the only—or even the main—source of language help. AI allows us to design new kinds of tools that are dynamic, personalised, and deeply responsive to users’ real needs.

One such tool is an AI-powered Writing Assistant designed to support second-language learners. When a learner makes a grammatical error, the tool offers three layers of help: a suggested correction, a short explanation, and a more detailed rule-based explanation. This support is immediate, relevant, and based on the user’s actual writing, turning mistakes into learning moments.

This presentation also offers a simple framework to explain how the tool works, using the concepts of the individual (the user’s mistake), the particular (the brief explanation), and the universal (the general rule). But unlike traditional grammar teaching—which starts with the rule—this approach starts with the learner and builds understanding from there.

By embedding grammar support directly into the writing process, AI is helping us rethink how we learn languages—and how we define lexicography in the 21st century.