New Russian Film Explores How Last Speaker of Ossetian Copes Using AI Robot

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Mar. 25 – The approximately 500,000 Ossetians living in the Russian Federation have suffered the loss of their native language and identity at roughly the same rates as many other numerically small nationalities there, a trend that makes a new film about the adventures of the last Ossetian speaker who works with an AI robot of greater import.
    The film whose production was funded by a Presidential grant tells the story of Gappo, an elderly Ossetian who is said to be the last speaker of his people’s language and who lost his job as an astronomer with the arrival of an AI robot who speaks his language and helps him cope (nazaccent.ru/content/43724-v-rossii-snyali-fantasticheskij-film-o-poslednem-nositele-osetinskogo-yazyka-i-ego-borbe-s-iskusstvennym-intellektom/).
    The message of the film, which is scheduled to be released in June, appears to be that artificial intelligence will help those peoples who are losing their native languages to move smoothly into a world where they won’t have serious problems just because those around them are speaking another language, presumably Russian.
    But as in the case with Moscow’s films in the past, most classically in that of the late Soviet film “The Man from Fifth Avenue,” the message the Kremlin wants to send and the message the viewers of the film will take from the movie may be very different and at odds with one another.
    In the case of “The Man from Fifth Avenue,” Soviet producers clearly hoped that viewers would look at the homeless man walking along that New York street with expensive shops and conclude that American society was inequitable. In fact, what Soviet viewers saw was just how wealthy Americans were.
    Now, while the Kremlin may want viewers to think about how AI will ease their transition from their native languages, viewers may in fact focus on the fact that their languages are not just dying but being killed by Moscow policies and that a robot who can still speak their native tongues is a poor substitute for the survival of their native language and people.