The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Intercultural Communication

Abstract

The arrival of the artificial intelligence era has changed the style of unimodal cultural communication and integrated multimodal communication technology, which helps understand social development and people’s lives from a new, all-round perspective. Cross-cultural communication can make full use of artificial intelligence and digital virtual simulation technology to achieve in-depth experience and in-depth perception of culture, and ultimately realize people’s in-depth recognition of each other’s national culture. The multimodal way of transforming language into a way of expression that the other party can understand and accept, thus generating identity, can greatly enhance the power of cross-cultural communication so that the content of the communication will first act on the emotional field of each other, and then transition from emotional identity to rational identity.

1. Introduction

Cross-cultural communication refers to all kinds of cultural information in the scope of time and space flow, sharing, and interactive process, its research content not only includes different cultural backgrounds of individuals, and groups, the characteristics and rules of the communication between organizations and countries, also involves cultural conflict and solve the way, technology development influence on culture, and many other aspects [1]. As a unique phenomenon, cross-cultural communication transmits and spreads information between various cultures, with most of it being attached to language [2]. If there is no communication, culture will lose its vitality. In the context of international exchanges, cross-cultural exchanges play an increasingly important role, reflecting the recognition of international audiences of the country’s culture [3]. The main purpose of cross-cultural communication is to obtain enough information to reduce uncertainty, reduce cultural conflict, and improve mutual adaptation as well as identity [4]. Cross-cultural exchange situates cultural phenomena within an international context, bridging cultural differences and fostering cultural and value identity [5]. Cultural exchanges are an important driving force for social development and civilization progress and a basic way for mankind to understand and communicate with each other, while cross-cultural exchanges are one of the main ways of international exchanges.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the result of continuous development in high-tech technology. In 1956, John McCarthy and other disciplines proposed it at the Dartmouth Conference in the United States, which is known as the strategic technology leading the future [6]. Laswell proposed the 5 W linear communication mode: namely the communication subject, communication content, communication channel, communication audience, and communication effect [7]. According to this communication mode, artificial intelligence technology is applied in various scenarios, which greatly improves the efficiency and accuracy of communication. With the development of ChatGPT and other cutting-edge science and technologies, AI is becoming more and more widely used in cultural exchanges, especially in cross-cultural exchanges.

Artificial intelligence is a subdiscipline of computer science involving the research, design, and application of intelligent machines [8]. The main research goal of artificial intelligence is to explore how machines can imitate and perform intellectual functions of the human brain, such as judgment, reasoning, proof, recognition, perception, understanding, design, thinking, etc [9]. Developing related theories and technology of AI, the field of study includes robots, speech recognition, image recognition, natural language processing, and expert systems etc [10]. “Artificial intelligence is exploring how to make computers capable a work that only humans could ever do.” The development of artificial intelligence after the “Expert Systems”, “Deep Blue” and other different stages, as the computer on the information processing and hardware function and the Internet data environment, artificial intelligence technology into the multilayer neural network (MNN) based on the era of “deep learning” [11].

The “deep learning” algorithm is based on building a multilevel recognition mode system, explores the high-level attributes and categories through the underlying analysis of characteristics, and excavates the distribution characteristics of massive data. Due to the emergence of deep learning algorithms, artificial intelligence has achieved a qualitative leap in algorithms [12]. It is different from the mode of simulating brain thinking by computer, and for the first time, the artificial intelligence system can quickly establish the best way to solve problems in the complex operations and laws of massive data [13]. With the development of deep learning intelligent neural networks, artificial intelligence can be quickly promoted in our social life. At present, AI has achieved great results in speech recognition, autonomous driving, biomedical, education and training, financial markets, and other application scenarios. In 2016, Google’s artificial intelligence program AlphaGo defeated Lee Sedol in Go, capturing the last highland in the field of human intelligence and directly having a significant impact on human production and quality of life [14]. The application of artificial intelligence in information processing systems, natural language understanding, machine learning, intelligent medical care, intelligent robots, and other fields enables artificial intelligence to have an all-round impact on the international community, and gradually become the core topic in cross-cultural exchange activities.

2. Application scenarios of artificial intelligence in cross-cultural communication

The application scenarios of artificial intelligence in cross-cultural communication mainly include four fields, namely, intelligent collection, intelligent production, intelligent delivery, and intelligent management. Intelligent collection and intelligent production can effectively solve the representative problems in the communication subject and the authenticity of the communication content [15]. Intelligent delivery can ensure the accuracy of the communication channel and communication audience. Intelligent management can further improve and optimize the communication content, communication channel, and communication audience according to the feedback of the receptor [16].

In the era of intelligent communication, information collection in cross-cultural exchange bid farewell to the traditional artificial statistics method and moved to the automatic method with the help of artificial intelligence and big data. The traditional way of intelligent collection mainly relies on manual browsing, searching, searching, and screening of information sources, which affects the timeliness of communication and communication. Take BBC, for example, which is one of the largest news media companies in the world, BBC uses artificial intelligence to build an intelligent information collection robot that can be used for news aggregation and content extraction, to monitor 850 news sources of international, domestic, and local news media [17]. After the information collection robot captures the original text and metadata of the information, BBC Juicer applies named entity recognition technology to identify and mark the concepts mentioned in the text, so as to provide intelligent retrieval of information sources, places, people, and events, as well as trend analysis in international communication for media communication. AP has also configured the corresponding information monitoring tool SAM [18]. AP staff can use SAM to search for and track information clues on the original Twitter and other social platforms in real-time. Compared with manual monitoring and collection of social media information, SAM effectively improves the accuracy and efficiency of information collection. Reuters in the UK uses a dedicated tracker (Reuters Tracer) to retrieve and browse data information on Twitter and other communication media, through data mining technology to determine themes and priorities to accurately obtain useful information [19].

Currently, with the advancement of cutting-edge technology, various AI-driven cultural exchange mediums have emerged, including machine writing, visual news, and virtual anchors [20]. Among them, machine writing uses artificial intelligence algorithms to process the data information collected in the intelligent collection stage and automatically generate effective communication text. For example, the AP auto-generated tool Wibbitz, a communication platform with automated video creation as its main function, works to convert text into video, without any manual operation [21]. Wibbitz can automatically convert pure text into a video clip, the content of the short including pictures, narration, charts, and other multimedia elements, transformation steps are as follows: the first system analysis object uploads text data, then generates a short video script, according to the script content automatically generate information complete and rich short video.

The information communication and recommendation system based on an artificial intelligence algorithm can realize personalized content recommendations and improve the efficiency of human-computer interaction by analyzing the status of the user login browser, project attributes of browsing information, browsing behavior data, and user’s social network information. Taking the chat tool Facebook as an example, it distributes social media with the help of a machine learning algorithm, optimizes user communication experience, and realizes accurate recommendations according to user’s preferences [22]. In the YouTube deep learning recommendation model, candidate video sets are generated for users based on the usage behavior and interests of YouTube users. Based on the OCEAN model, Cambridge Analytica has designed a quantitative deduction evaluation tool using the five-personality classification method to explore the potential psychological characteristics and personalities of users, quantitatively analyze the personalities of users, and use big data analysis technology to achieve precise positioning of target users [23].

Intelligent communication management improves the communication efficiency between users and the system by conducting deep mining of users’ comments and feedback. The New York Times has worked with Jigsaw to create the Coral Project, which relies on artificial intelligence algorithms to grade and portrait users and facilitate information exchange between users. The New York Times used the Moderator model-building algorithm to conduct deep learning of user discussions in the comments section for 10 years, accurately identify user discussions, and screen out malicious and aggressive comments [24].

3. Impact of generative AI on cross-cultural communication

Different from the emotional interaction of traditional artificial intelligence, Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) refers to the computer’s ability not only to recognize human emotions but also to input corresponding emotional feedback when humans use the computer [25]. The foundation of emotional interaction is “emotional computing” technology, which aims to establish a harmonious human-computer interaction environment by giving computers the ability to recognize, understand, express, and adapt to human emotions, and to make the computer have a higher and more comprehensive level of intelligence. At present, in international network of cultural exchanges, billions of users around the world have billions of times of interactive information every day, including human interaction and human-computer interaction. There is also ubiquitous intelligent interaction in this communication information. With the popularization of the Internet and communication technology in the world, users’ demand and dependence on the network are increasing, and different types of emotional feedback mechanisms are presented in the network information exchange, which greatly improves the possibility of artificial intelligence training a deep intelligent interaction model beyond the semantic space.

In recent years, text-based ChatBot has been capable of human-computer interaction through natural language, and the technology has been widely deployed across applications. In 2022, OpenAI released the chat generation pretraining Converter (ChatGPT), which completely changed the mode of artificial intelligence and human interaction, caused a sensation on a global scale, and became a phenomenal generative AI product [14]. ChatGPT is a GAI developed based on a large language model, which can complete communication tasks between different users, such as language translation, induction of language texts in different cultures, answering knowledge questions in different fields, etc. The free-text interaction characteristics of GAI are more flexible and adaptable in the process of dialog and communication with human users. The development design of GAI combines both ability and emotion, enabling users to produce a complex perception of GAI like human communication. Research has proved that human users can generate different social responses after communicating with GAI: in behavior, human users and GAI can interact more continuously and closely; in emotion, human users can communicate with GAI, effectively relieve negative emotions, generate positive emotional gain and arouse the psychological resonance of users; in cognition, GAI can learn new knowledge after communicating with human users, enrich the knowledge reserve of the internal expert system of the model, and improve the working state of the model in the future [26].

In the context of human social interactions, GAI is gradually taking the role of a social actor, prompting users to generate social responses based on their perceptions of AI [27]. The process framework is shown in Figure 1. In the process of interaction between human users and GAI, the mental perception of GAI is formed according to whether GAI has the ability to think and feel emotions [28]. In this state, communication between human users and GAI has two-way interaction and influence on each other. Based on the mental perception of GAI, human-computer interaction can generate the social response of internal communication, and this reaction is reflected in three aspects: behavior, cognition and emotion.

Figure 1.

The GAI acts as the theoretical framework of social actors.

4. Expanding the connotation of cross-cultural exchanges

In the field of historical heritage protection, the use of artificial intelligence technology to protect the material and intangible historical and cultural heritage of various countries in the world will become a hot topic in international cultural exchanges. The combination of science technology and history can not only enable the traditional culture and art of various countries to grow anew after thousands of years of changes but also let people from different backgrounds experience the charm of different cultures and arts, and feel the diversity and richness of human civilization. Microsoft Research Asia and Dunhuang Research Institute have added the online chat robot “Dunhuang Little Ice” to the WeChat official account of Dunhuang Academy [29]. At present, this ChatBot has grown into an expert in Dunhuang cultural knowledge and has become a typical case of using the intelligent Internet platform to publicize and exchange historical heritage. Recently, Japanese government departments have begun to study the use of artificial intelligence technology to analyze the production procedures of various ancient handicrafts and to digitize the production process intelligently to facilitate communication and promotion [30].

In the field of intelligent education, “artificial intelligence + education” has gradually developed into a global trend, education change is imperative; the development of science and technology has become the endogenous variable of education innovation and the focus of global common concern. The international community in the frontier science and technology with the international quality education resources integration cooperation and communication more and more frequent. With the technological progress of artificial intelligence in natural language understanding, the problem of language communication barriers can be solved quickly and efficiently. Since 2016, the Ministry of Education of China has implemented the “Sino-US industry-education Integration + High-level Application-oriented University Construction Project”. This project, through the deep cooperation between 100 applied universities, 100 schools, and enterprises establishment an “intelligent education platform” and “school + enterprise” cooperation mode to establish a new international application technology education system [29]. Through the introduction of American educational resources, build a curriculum and teaching system with international standards and establish an intelligent education evaluation system.

5. Epilogue

With the global popularity and adoption of cutting-edge science and technologies such as machine learning and 6G communication technology around the world, the influence of artificial intelligence on human cross-cultural exchanges will become more and more obvious in the future, and human exchanges will be more intelligent.