Researchers from MIT, IBM and the University of California, San Diego, have developed a new model for training artificial intelligence (AI) to achieve more efficient machine translations. Interpreters and translators wonder if, with technological advances, they will soon be definitively replaced by machines.
The profession of translator could soon disappear
It is commonly said that artificial intelligences and robots will only replace humans for tedious jobs and tasks, which will allow the appearance of other professions, more rewarding for humans. However, according to Xavier Combe, conference interpreter and translator, founding member of the French Association of Independent Conference Interpreters and teacher at the University of Paris X, his job is far from tedious, and yet it could well be threatens. When humans begin to learn and translate into another language, the incorporation of other sensory information, such as images associated with words, improves language acquisition and retention. It is by using this principle that researchers from MIT, IBM and the University of California at San Diego have developed a new model for training artificial intelligence (AI) to obtain more efficient machine translations. , which suggests that we will soon be able to completely do without human translators
AI is a help, but also a privacy risk
Advances in this area are very rapid and numerous. For example, to understand texts written in a foreign language, an electronic pencil has been developed. It scans the text and performs the translation in real time. This tool already exists today, which shows how quickly the practical application of advances in research is. In a hundred years, Xavier Combe envisions a world where human beings will be equipped with a linguistic prosthesis on the ear or under the skin to understand everything that is said, whatever the language. But, according to this language professional, language “is not just a communication tool, but an intangible good, a common that serves to shape and enrich individual and collective thought”: learning foreign cultures will be essential for understanding of the other. Unfortunately, in the language sector, artificial intelligence does not only represent a help, but also a number of serious risks: the algorithms are very good at collecting personal data and automated threat messages, or even at using a voice that imitates another, for making fake videos.