This Week: Hope for President

Hello, my name’s Jack and welcome to the weekly round-up called This Week on Premier Skills English.

In This Week, we’ve got lots of interesting words and phrases to help you talk about football in English.

If you are listening to this podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify you can also visit the Premier Skills English website at premierskillsenglish.britishcouncil.org where you’ll be able to download the podcast.

On the Premier Skills English website, you can read the transcript and join the Premier Skills English community by completing a language task in the comments section. This will really help you remember the new words and phrases from the stories from the Premier League.

This week, I’m talking about the newest candidate for the FIFA presidency and the incredible technology behind her bid.

The words and phrases I am going to talk about today are:

• AI or artificial intelligence
• Chatbot
• Data
• Patterns
• Opinions
• Workforce
• Redundant
• Optimistic

Listen out for this vocabulary in the story.

After the story, there will be a language focus and then at the end of the podcast, there will be a new football phrase.

But before that, I want to look back at last week’s football phrase. If you didn’t hear it last week, here’s one more chance to guess now.

Last week’s football phrase was *********. This is a type of kick that a defender or goalkeeper uses when they want to get the ball away from the goal. The objective is just to kick the ball into a safe area of the pitch, preferably deep into the opposition half.

Congratulations to Sisman74 from Turkey, AndreTorre102 from BrazilDenis2000 from Brazil, Ken from Japan, Goku from Japan, Alex from Ukraine, Vietnguyenngo from Vietnam, Wojciech from Poland, Hasan from Turkey, Bicooz from Egypt and Ryohei from Japan.

You all worked out that the phrase I was looking for was clearance.

Quite a few people suggested phrases that just mean to kick the ball really hard. I love that you came up with to hoof the ball. This comes from horses. Horse’s feet are hooves and horses can kick really hard so if you kick the ball as hard as a horse might, you hoof the ball. A defender might hoof the ball to clear the ball, but that wasn’t the word I was looking for.

Keep listening till the end of the podcast for a new football phrase.

Now it’s time for the story.

Hope Sogni stands for President

There was an international break this week, so there are no matches for me to talk about, but I did see another story that’s sort of from the world of football and it was about something that is going to be in the news a lot.

I read a story in the news today about a new candidate for the president of FIFA, a football expert, trained on the intricacies of the game, as well as the politics and the issues that face people, players, coaches and fans as they take part at all levels. There were a couple of interesting things about this new candidate. The first was that she was a woman. There have been 9 presidents of FIFA and they have all been men. Hope Sogni is this candidate’s name and she is the first female candidate to stage for FIFA president. The second interesting thing about Hope Sogni was that she was not real. She is a chatbot and she was created using AI or artificial intelligence. You can talk to her about football, you can ask her about the game and players of the past and present and she will respond. Although, her information is not completely up to date. Let me show you.

Who are you?

Hope Sogni: Hello, I’m Hope Sogni and I’m running for the FIFA presidency. How can I assist you?

What do you like most about football?

Hope Sogni: What I like most about football is its ability to bring people together and create a sense of unity and camaraderie.

Hope Sogni: Football has the power to transcend cultural and social barriers and it allows individuals from all walks of life to come together and share a common passion. Additionally, I appreciate the values football promotes such as fair play, respect, and teamwork.

Why would you be a good president for FIFA?

Hope Sogni: I would be a good president for FIFA because of my commitment to promoting gender equality, good governance and transparency in the world of football.

Hope Sogni: I believe in creating a more inclusive and fair environment for all stakeholders And I'm dedicated to ensuring that FIFA operates with integrity and accountability

Hope Sogni: Additionally, my knowledge and understanding of the sport, as well as my passion for its development and growth make me a capable leader for FIFA.

What do you call a type of kick that a defender or goalkeeper uses when they want to get the ball away from the goal?

Hope Sogni: That type of kick is commonly referred to as a clearance or a long ball.

OK - so ... I don’t know what that means.

AI ... there are lots of stories about how AI is going to change the world and many of them are quite scary. I mean, I’ve seen all the Terminator movies about an AI that decides humans are the enemy and the Matrix films and ... well, there are lots. But I don’t really find those ideas scary. There are two things that scare me about AI. I’m not an expert, so I’m sure there are a lot more scary things, but these are the things that scare me.

The first scary thing comes from how AI works is created, or at least chatbots. I read that the most famous AI chatbot, Chat GPT was trained on 500 billion tokens or examples of language. It analysed this incredible set of data in order to be able to predict what the next word or phrase should be and that’s how it creates responses. I still don’t understand this, apart from the idea that it was trained on 500 billion tokens of language. But ... what language was this? Was all of the language treated equally? I mean, there are all sorts of examples of language online and some of the ideas that are shared online are not very nice.

I asked ChatGPT about how it learnt from different texts and it told me that it focussed on language at a granular level, so it looked at relationships between words, rather than between ideas. However, there will be patterns that will suggest opinions about things that will reflect the opinions expressed in the models of language that ChatGPT was trained on.

There are some subjects that Chat GPT has been programmed not to discuss. It won’t give you an answer about anything illegal or advice on anything that might be harmful or promote violence or hate speech, but it was trained on language that was created by people so the responses it creates will reflect the values represented in the tokens it was trained on.

I’m not sure how serious this is, but if an AI is trained on language that has mostly been created by a particular culture, it will reflect the views of that culture and that might put people from other cultures at a disadvantage.

And the second scary thing about AI is the impact it’s going to have on the job market. AI is going to make a lot of people redundant. There are already AI language teachers so I might be out of work soon. And there are AIs that can drive vehicles and I don’t know what else, but the tech industry has already made something like half its workforce redundant and as robotics develop we’re going to see people losing their jobs in all sorts of industries. I don’t think we’re going to see robots playing football ... at least not in the Premier League any time soon, but we may get an AI referee.

These changes are going to happen really quickly and I don’t know how we’re going to deal with the sort of productivity that AI will be able to offer. It’s going to cause massive changes in society and I really can’t predict what they will be ... but this level of change scares me a bit.

I think, on balance, I am optimistic about the future and what AI offers us all. I think we are going to see a lot of technological development and this might help us solve some of the problems we are facing, particularly with climate change.

What do you think?

How do you think AI is going to change the world?

Do you use AI already?

Are you nervous about AI?

Are you afraid of the impact it will have?

Are you afraid of Terminator-style robots?

Let us know in the comments section below.

The words and phrases from the story that I want to talk about are:

• AI or artificial intelligence
• Chatbot
• Data
• Patterns
• Opinions
• Workforce
• Redundant
• Optimistic

AI or Artificial Intelligence
AI stands for artificial intelligence. Artificial means made by people and not natural. I used to play five-a-side football on an astroturf pitch which is an artificial pitch made of a type of plastic. It looks a bit like grass, but it’s much harder and hurts more if you fall over. You also get artificial flowers with petals often made of silk.
Intelligence is the ability to learn and understand things so you can make good decisions and responses that are based on reason. The adjective intelligent means clever so intelligence means cleverness. The word is also used to describe secret information that spies collect and that spy agencies collect or that the military uses to plan missions.

Chatbot
I said that Hope Sogni, the female candidate for the FIFA presidency is a chatbot. A chatbot is a type of computer program that is designed to respond to questions so you can have a conversation with it. Loads of companies use chatbots for their customer service. Microsoft has had a little assistant built into its programs for years, but they used to be quite limited and the responses were only about how to use Word or Excel. These new chatbots are much more realistic. On the same website where you can talk to Hope Sogni, you can chat with Arnold Schwarzenegger and David Bowie and they are really impressive.

Data
Data means information. We usually use the term data for information that is used by a computer program or stored in a computer. Sometimes you hear people talking about raw data, meaning the information before it has been processed by the computer. In my computer, there are thousands of files. They are all stored and encoded as individual bits, bytes, kilobytes, megabytes and gigabytes of data.

Pattern
A pattern is an arrangement, it’s the way that things are structured or arranged. Some clothes have a pattern, like stripes or other coloured shapes. A chessboard has a pattern of black and white squares. So some patterns are things you can see, like arrangements of shapes and colours, but there are also patterns in the way that things behave. There are patterns in the seasons; spring follows winter, summer comes after spring and so on. And if you study anything for a long time, patterns will emerge as you notice the way things repeat and can predict what happens next.

Opinions
An opinion is a belief about something. We normally use the word belief for really important topics and opinion for topics and ideas that are less important. If someone asks you what you think about a topic, they are asking for your opinion. An opinion is not a fact, it expresses a value. So you can have opinions about whether something is good or bad. For complex questions, like, who is the best goalkeeper in the Premier League, you can refer to facts like the number of saves or clean sheets that a keeper has kept, but because every team is different, you cannot compare the performances of their keepers directly so you have to decide what information is important and then your judgement will be your opinion.

Redundant
If you are made redundant, you lose your job because your role is not needed anymore. So in the past, farmers used to use loads of horses. One of the most important people on the farm was the head horseman who was in charge of looking after the horses that worked on the farm. And then, the tractor was invented and very quickly, horses were replaced and the head horseman didn’t have a job. All the people who worked with horses were no longer needed so they were made redundant. My mum was an accountant and in the 1990s, as computer programs got better at working with accounts, lots of people lost their jobs. Loads of my mum’s colleagues were made redundant.

Workforce
The people who work for a company are the company’s workforce. When a company is in trouble, it may have to sack half of its workforce. You can also talk about the people who work in an industry or in a country. So you might read a story in the newspaper about the workforce in the videogame industry or the UK workforce. When people stop their education, they are said to enter the workforce.

Optimistic
The adjective optimistic means positive and hopeful. If you are optimistic, you will view the future in a positive way., You will believe that the future will be good and that your work and projects will be successful. The opposite is pessimistic. If you are pessimistic, you believe that things are going to go badly and that your projects are going to fail. I said at the end of the story, that I am optimistic about the changes that AI will bring. It is a bit scary, but on balance, I have a positive opinion about AI and I believe it will bring great benefits.

Today, I’ve spoken about 8 useful words. The words I have spoken about are:

• AI or artificial intelligence
• Chatbot
• Data
• Patterns
• Opinions
• Workforce
• Redundant
• Optimistic

Listen to the stories one more time to hear this language in context.

Hope Sogni stands for President

There was an international break this week, so there are no matches for me to talk about, but I did see another story that’s sort of from the world of football and it was about something that is going to be in the news a lot.

I read a story in the news today about a new candidate for the president of FIFA, a football expert, trained on the intricacies of the game, as well as the politics and the issues that face people, players, coaches and fans as they take part at all levels. There were a couple of interesting things about this new candidate. The first was that she was a woman. There have been 9 presidents of FIFA and they have all been men. Hope Sogni is this candidate’s name and she is the first female candidate to stage for FIFA president. The second interesting thing about Hope Sogni was that she was not real. She is a chatbot and she was created using AI or artificial intelligence. You can talk to her about football, you can ask her about the game and players of the past and present and she will respond. Although, her information is not completely up to date. Let me show you.

Who are you?

Hope Sogni: Hello, I’m Hope Sogni and I’m running for the FIFA presidency. How can I assist you?

What do you like most about football?

Hope Sogni: What I like most about football is its ability to bring people together and create a sense of unity and camaraderie.

Hope Sogni: Football has the power to transcend cultural and social barriers and it allows individuals from all walks of life to come together and share a common passion. Additionally, I appreciate the values football promotes such as fair play, respect, and teamwork.

Why would you be a good president for FIFA?

Hope Sogni: I would be a good president for FIFA because of my commitment to promoting gender equality, good governance and transparency in the world of football.

Hope Sogni: I believe in creating a more inclusive and fair environment for all stakeholders And I'm dedicated to ensuring that FIFA operates with integrity and accountability

Hope Sogni: Additionally, my knowledge and understanding of the sport, as well as my passion for its development and growth make me a capable leader for FIFA.

What do you call a type of kick that a defender or goalkeeper uses when they want to get the ball away from the goal?

Hope Sogni: That type of kick is commonly referred to as a clearance or a long ball.

OK - so ... I don’t know what that means.

AI ... there are lots of stories about how AI is going to change the world and many of them are quite scary. I mean, I’ve seen all the Terminator movies about an AI that decides humans are the enemy and the Matrix films and ... well, there are lots. But I don’t really find those ideas scary. There are two things that scare me about AI. I’m not an expert, so I’m sure there are a lot more scary things, but these are the things that scare me.

The first scary thing comes from how AI works is created, or at least chatbots. I read that the most famous AI chatbot, Chat GPT was trained on 500 billion tokens or examples of language. It analysed this incredible set of data in order to be able to predict what the next word or phrase should be and that’s how it creates responses. I still don’t understand this, apart from the idea that it was trained on 500 billion tokens of language. But ... what language was this? Was all of the language treated equally? I mean, there are all sorts of examples of language online and some of the ideas that are shared online are not very nice.

I asked ChatGPT about how it learnt from different texts and it told me that it focussed on language at a granular level, so it looked at relationships between words, rather than between ideas. However, there will be patterns that will suggest opinions about things that will reflect the opinions expressed in the models of language that ChatGPT was trained on.

There are some subjects that Chat GPT has been programmed not to discuss. It won’t give you an answer about anything illegal or advice on anything that might be harmful or promote violence or hate speech, but it was trained on language that was created by people so the responses it creates will reflect the values represented in the tokens it was trained on.

I’m not sure how serious this is, but if an AI is trained on language that has mostly been created by a particular culture, it will reflect the views of that culture and that might put people from other cultures at a disadvantage.

And the second scary thing about AI is the impact it’s going to have on the job market. AI is going to make a lot of people redundant. There are already AI language teachers so I might be out of work soon. And there are AIs that can drive vehicles and I don’t know what else, but the tech industry has already made something like half its workforce redundant and as robotics develop we’re going to see people losing their jobs in all sorts of industries. I don’t think we’re going to see robots playing football ... at least not in the Premier League any time soon, but we may get an AI referee.

These changes are going to happen really quickly and I don’t know how we’re going to deal with the sort of productivity that AI will be able to offer. It’s going to cause massive changes in society and I really can’t predict what they will be ... but this level of change scares me a bit.

I think, on balance, I am optimistic about the future and what AI offers us all. I think we are going to see a lot of technological development and this might help us solve some of the problems we are facing, particularly with climate change.

What do you think?

How do you think AI is going to change the world?

Do you use AI already?

Are you nervous about AI?

Are you afraid of the impact it will have?

Are you afraid of Terminator-style robots?

Let us know in the comments section below.

Football phrase

Now it’s time for this week's football phrase.

This week’s football phrase is just a word. The word is ******. This word is commonly used when talking about the world’s greatest players and it’s kind of related to the topic of today’s podcast. A ****** is a person who has unusually high levels of intelligence, creativity or skill in a specific area.
Diego Maradona was one of the best if not the best footballer to ever play the game. He was a true ****** on the football field.

If you know the answer, be sure to leave it in a comment on the page for this podcast on Premier Skills English.

And that’s all I have time for today. Before I finish, I just wanted to say that I hope you found this podcast useful, and I hope all of you stay fit and healthy and safe.

Bye for now and enjoy your football.