IELTS Speaking Part 3: AI
4 Part 3 discussion questions on ai, with developed sample answers of the kind Part 3 expects.
Have you ever had any experience with things related to AI?
Constantly, though for a long time I never thought of it as artificial intelligence at all. The map on my phone reroutes me around a jam on the way to work, my camera decides which face to focus on, and my inbox quietly filters out thirty spam messages a day, and every single one of those is a model making a prediction behind the scenes. It's become invisible infrastructure, which is probably the surest sign of a technology that has truly arrived. More recently I've started using it far more deliberately. I'll ask a chatbot to tighten up a paragraph I've drafted, explain a piece of code or generate practice questions when I'm preparing materials, and it genuinely saves me an hour or two a week. What surprised me most was how quickly it stopped feeling novel and simply became another tool I reach for without a second thought. I'd be reluctant to give any of it up now, which says something in itself.
Have you ever used AI-based technology?
Yes, and the clearest example is translation, which I rely on almost daily. If I'm reading a Turkish article or need to dash off a short message in Russian, I'll run it through a translation app, and the quality has improved so dramatically over the last few years that it now captures idiom and tone rather than churning out individual words. Ten years ago the output was laughably clumsy, whereas now it's perfectly serviceable for anything short of legal documents. The other place it crops up in my life is study and work. Voice assistants set my alarms and reminders, a grammar checker catches the mistakes I habitually make in long sentences, and I'll ask a model to summarise a twenty-page report before deciding whether it's worth reading properly. None of that is dramatic on its own, but together it strips away a surprising amount of friction from an ordinary day.
How has AI changed the way people work?
What stands out most is how much of the routine grind that used to fill people's mornings has simply been absorbed. Drafting a standard contract, sorting invoices, transcribing a meeting or producing the first version of a report are now things you oversee rather than do, which pushes people towards judgement, relationships and the decisions a model can't yet be trusted with. A lawyer I know spends far less time on document review and considerably more with her clients, and she reckons the job improved for it. The less comfortable shift is that expectations have risen to match. Once anyone can churn out a polished draft in ten minutes, ten minutes quietly becomes the new deadline, so the time saved gets absorbed rather than handed back to the worker. Output per person has climbed, but so has the pace, and plenty of people feel busier than they did five years ago.
Do you think AI will replace human jobs in the future?
It will certainly displace tasks, and in some occupations those tasks add up to the entire job. Roles built on predictable, rule-based work, such as basic translation, routine bookkeeping or first-line call centre support, are already shrinking, because a system running around the clock at almost no cost is exceedingly hard to compete with on those terms. Anyone whose work can be fully spelled out in a manual should be taking this seriously. I'm more sceptical about wholesale replacement, though, because most jobs are bundles of tasks rather than single ones. A nurse, a teacher or a plumber combines physical skill, judgement and human trust in a way that automating one component doesn't dissolve; it merely reshapes what the day looks like. Historically, technology has redistributed work rather than eliminated it outright, and I'd expect many future jobs to revolve around directing and checking these systems.
Reading a model answer is not the same as saying one. The sample above shows what a strong Part 3 answer sounds like. What it cannot tell you is how yours sounds — whether you hesitate, repeat the question back, or run out of things to say at forty seconds.
You can record an answer to this exact question and get it marked on fluency and coherence, lexical resource, grammatical range and pronunciation — the same four criteria the examiner uses.
Common questions
How is Part 3 different from Part 1?
Part 1 is about you; Part 3 is about people in general. The questions move to society, causes and consequences, and the answers are expected to be longer and more developed — an opinion plus a reason plus an example, rather than two sentences.
What if I have no opinion on the question?
You are not marked on the opinion, so pick one and support it. Saying you have never thought about it and stopping there leaves the examiner nothing to assess.
How long does Part 3 last?
Four to five minutes. The topics develop out of your Part 2 card, so the discussion is usually connected to what you just described.
Model answers written and reviewed by The English All-in-One IELTS team. They are teaching models showing what each band looks like, not real candidate scripts.