How I use AI - Japanese Example

I think a good way to understand the proper usage of AI is with a practical example.

From a coding perspective, I don't always have a ready made example, but I use it with my language learning in a similar fashion, and my Japanese is poor enough still that I can pick an arbitrary sentence of enough complexity and benefit from it.

I recently switched from Windows to Linux on my computer and finally setup my Japanese Input.

This sentence was something I wanted to convey in a group chat in Japanese earlier.

My first step in just a normal stream of though. What is my first best guess at how to form this sentence?

最近パソコンに「Windows」から「Linux」までかえました、そして遂に今日は日本語の入力が設定された。

Next question: How confident am I in that answer? Honestly, this one I felt was about 60% of the way there. My guess was that it was coherent, but that there were things I could improve upon to make it more natural sounding.

So, next step. Can I think of any ways on my own, after re-reading this, to improve on it further?

In this case, the answer was no.

Do I think AI could make it better? Yes. AI is pretty good at making suggestions to particle usage at the very least, which is an area where I struggle and there are quite a few particles in that sentence.

So, I ran it through Gemini. And it had a number of suggestions on particle usage and it suggested a change from 〜から〜まで to 〜から〜へ . This usage of "KARA ~ MADE" was one place I was pretty sure I had room for improvement. And Gemini's suggestion was inline with things I had seen before. So, I took the edits along with the particle changes it suggested.

It also suggested that I change かえた to 乗り換えた and insisted that this was more consistent with how people in the tech community speak of such things. This was suspicious to me. That particular word, in my studies so far, had only ever been used to talk about transfers in public transit like to a different bus or train.

So my next step was to do a quick Google search for "LINUXに乗り換え" I took just the stem of the verb so I was more likely to get a hit and chose Linux as I suspected that there would be Japanese people talking about switching to Linux the same way I've seen with English channels. And sure enough, I got some hits. I also quickly double checked with an online dictionary for alternate definitions and it lined up. So, I took that edit as well and ended up with:

 最近僕のパソコンを「Windows」から「Linux」に乗り換えた、そして遂に今日は日本語入力が設定できました。

The important things to note are: I did not ask AI to write the sentence for me starting from English. Just as, with code, I would never trust AI to just flat out write an entire chunk of code for me. Where possible, I start with attempting it myself. Next, I'll refactor on my own and attempt to use non-AI tools. 

Then I'll only resort to AI if I cannot get where I need to on my own and have a good reason to suspect that AI actually can get the job done. 

Lastly, I'll review the response I get back from AI. You shouldn't be using AI if you don't know the subject well enough to catch obvious lies or possible hallucinations (like my 乗り換え) example. And, when you do spot something questionable, always verify.

I'll add an extra point for developers. Never paste corporate IP into an AI chat unless you know your company permits it. If I need help with work code, I'll always generate a simplified example of what I want improved stripping out anything IP specific. 

 

As you can see above, the final sentence is clearly something AI only helped with. Not something AI wrote. It is also very similar and consistent with how I tried to write it initially and the edits themselves are simply learning points for  me.  

To cap this off, I'll get Google Translate to write the sentence:

最近、コンピューターを Windows から Linux に切り替え、ようやく日本語入力を設定しました。

 

Now, here is what I don't like about this sentence. 

1. The choice of コンピューター over パソコン.  
2. The use of きりかえ.

It also chose ようやくinstead of 遂に and chose not to use できました at the end which are all less annoying but worth pointing out.

Starting with the major points though... I intentionally didn't use コンピューター because it is a long, boring, formal term. And whether I used Google Translate or Gemini, I think both would have had similar problems. They are good translations, but they are not necessarily natural, nor how I would say it.

The second is REALLY odd to me. It is a new word to me, but looking at the kanji I can tell that the impression is more... aggressive and also not, as Gemini had told me, not the common lingo for this sort of statement.  Again, I don't think that the translation is "wrong", but in this case I do think it would have given the wrong impression.

The smaller complaints are just that; smaller. The choice of 遂に was my own because I had admittedly forgotten ようやく, but ultimately I liked my choice better as it felt more to me like it truly was a long time and the できました was an edit I took from Gemini's suggestion to make it sound more like an accomplishment, which frankly, goes better with the other choice I made.

And I think this is why it makes the most sense to lean on AI only as an additional tool, but to start with your own skill set and other non-AI tools. 

When asked to give the answer, AI tries to do just that. Give ONE answer. It isn't actually thinking and those answers aren't always great. But, when asked to comment on something you've provided, AI often gives multiple options and explains each. It still isn't thinking and the answers aren't always great, but the options and rationale are often still worth far more than any single, unjustified answer. It also serves as a learning reinforcement tool rather than a crutch.