A few days ago, I watched a video of myself talking in perfect Chinese. I've been studying the language on and off for only a few years, and I'm far from fluent. But there I was, pronouncing each character flawlessly in the correct tone, just as a native speaker would. Gone were my grammar mistakes and awkward pauses, replaced by a smooth and slightly alien-sounding voice. "My favorite food is sushi," I said--wo zui xihuan de shiwu shi shousi--with no hint of excitement or joy.

A record number of students are enrolled in Artificial Intelligence (AI)-related university courses, new figures from the UK Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) have revealed. Today the UK admissions service for higher education published the university and college level application and acceptance figures for the 2020. The figures showed that the "continued popularity of STEM subjects shows no sign of waning" the independent charity said. Between 2011 and 2020, there was a 400% jump in acceptances to artificial intelligence (AI) courses, from just 65 in 2011 to 355 in 2020. Acceptances to computer science courses have also risen by almost 50% and acceptances to engineering courses are up 21%.

The days of teaching yourself Japanese exclusively through Crunchyroll shows are coming to an end. Online language learning company Duolingo announced on Wednesday that it has released a Japanese language course for its iOS app with an Android version dropping soon. This won't be some dumbed-down anglicized lesson plan either. Rather than using romaji, which are Japanese words spelled out with Roman letters (ie, "kawaii" or "Hi de koroshimasu"), this language course will teach you to understand 100 Kanji and all the Hiragana characters. And unlike some of Duolingo's other language courses, whose exercises sometimes more closely resembled MadLibs entries than anything you'd ever expect to hear someone actually say, the Japanese course features a strong focus on real-world interactions like ordering food and asking directions.