| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3] > | Poll: What is your general attitude towards AI? Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
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Liena Vijupe 
Latvia
Local time: 21:39
Member (2014)
French to Latvian
+ ...
| Alternating between indifference and loathing | Nov 21, 2023 |
Even screwdrivers are more exciting, at least they work and are fit for purpose! A screwdriver can save lives, whereas AI... maybe it can too, but it just does more damage in the process.
[Edited at 2023-11-21 17:11 GMT]
| | | | Alex Lichanow
Germany
Local time: 20:39
Member (2020)
English to German
+ ...
| To be fair... | Nov 21, 2023 |
Liena Vijupe wrote:
Even screwdrivers are more exciting, at least they work and are fit for purpose! A screwdriver can save lives, whereas AI... maybe it can too, but it just does more damage in the process.
[Edited at 2023-11-21 17:11 GMT]
...AI absolutely CAN save lives - if used, for example, in medical imaging. Its use in translation only makes lives harder, though.
| | | | Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 19:39
Member (2008)
Italian to English
Alex Lichanow wrote:
...AI absolutely CAN save lives - if used, for example, in medical imaging.
How does that work? Details please.
| | | | Alex Lichanow
Germany
Local time: 20:39
Member (2020)
English to German
+ ...
| AI in medical imaging | Nov 21, 2023 |
Tom in London wrote:
Alex Lichanow wrote:
...AI absolutely CAN save lives - if used, for example, in medical imaging.
How does that work? Details please.
I can only quote what I learn from translation jobs at this point, but as far as I know, deep learning AI can be used to massively enhance medical images, so medical personnel can make faster and better treatment decisions.
That being said, I am absolutely not an expert in this field, but this article actually looks pretty promising in providing the details on the opportunities and risks: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landig/article/PIIS2589-7500(20)30160-6/fulltext
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Arne Krueger
Germany
Local time: 20:39
German to English
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Hmm... I think it's a design issue... It's an issue of complexity and accuracy. A (certainly in the Western world) famous entrepreneur just recently said that AI could render 95%+ of all jobs unnecessary in future. There have been many, many people before him that claimed this, but I would even say AI has the potential to make 100% of all jobs irrelevant. If you learn or train for a job, you learn certain techniques, you learn how to use them in certain situations, etc. Same is true with AI or p... See more Hmm... I think it's a design issue... It's an issue of complexity and accuracy. A (certainly in the Western world) famous entrepreneur just recently said that AI could render 95%+ of all jobs unnecessary in future. There have been many, many people before him that claimed this, but I would even say AI has the potential to make 100% of all jobs irrelevant. If you learn or train for a job, you learn certain techniques, you learn how to use them in certain situations, etc. Same is true with AI or programs designed to solve complex tasks. What concerns the issue of problems created by AI: I get that, but look into the history of mankind. There have been colossal failures. What happened afterwards? Adjustments and progress. People learned from that. The same is true with AI. I am personally not debating whether AI is a good or bad invention, whether it has a positive or negative impact on our financial situation, I am just saying what (you and) I can see and what is feasible. 100 years ago, car engines were started by hand. Some decades later, injection volumes of fuel were determined by chips... There are machines that can build entire houses alone. There are 1 million other examples of how AI has made our lives better and more convenient. That's just a fact. And that's why I like it and am for it. If we look at our situation as translators: In the long run it is the client that determines what will fly (I want an AI product or not). Nobody can influence that. And that's a good thing.
As for what Alex just wrote about medical imaging. Yes, this is one example. However, to enhance medical images can never be 100% precise as the machine basically just compares past pictures and gives a “best guess” suggestion based on them. This is not what I mean by using AI. It should be crystal clear that AI should only be used in 100% accurate situations. In this case, if AI can’t 100% determine the cause, the program should stop and issue a warning. Otherwise, we will have (and have) the problems raised by other forum members. ▲ Collapse
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Let the AI's switch be always ON ))
| | | | Peter Bak
Denmark
Local time: 20:39
English to Danish
+ ...
From talking with my artist friends about how AI image generators basically steal the work of art of people to generate images, I think that's horrible and should have legal consequences. On the other hand I believe it is hyped up, but seems to be the selling point when I look around me. AI is the new buzzword, but it still underdelivers massively compared to its expectations. People think it's magic, lol.
I don't really care about it. I'm a subtitle translating machine myself at th... See more From talking with my artist friends about how AI image generators basically steal the work of art of people to generate images, I think that's horrible and should have legal consequences. On the other hand I believe it is hyped up, but seems to be the selling point when I look around me. AI is the new buzzword, but it still underdelivers massively compared to its expectations. People think it's magic, lol.
I don't really care about it. I'm a subtitle translating machine myself at this point. When I receive an "AI-translated" subtitle translation to use as a reference I simply laugh. It's way faster for me to just grind out the translations myself, than having to check the other file constantly.
[Edited at 2023-11-21 20:18 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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I follow developments in the various areas of AI research with interest, and when I see something that looks useful, I use it.
I also feel apprehension, not about AI itself, but about what horrible uses some nasty human beings might find for it (see also electricity, virology, nuclear energy, etc.).
Anyone who says they "hate" AI doesn't understand it. It's like saying you "hate" meteorology, because sometimes the weather is bad.
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Philip Lees wrote:
It's like saying you "hate" meteorology, because sometimes the weather is bad.
Lol, I'm wondering if that's the worst analogy I've ever seen!
I would hate the use of AI in meteorology if I stood to lose my job as a meteorologist because of it.
And that's why I hate its use in translation and editing and copywriting.
I also hate its use in many other areas where it's costing people their jobs and lowering quality. I have no problem with a product costing a few extra pence so that I can talk to a human being if there's a problem. Or get to read a sensible and relevant product description in the first place.
While some of this tech might eventually be good for humanity, it's not currently good for me, and I hate it. Do I need to understand AI to know that?
| | | | | Living proof | Nov 23, 2023 |
Christopher Schröder wrote:
More hate
Thanks, Chris. You just proved my point very effectively.
| | | | | An allergy to hype | Nov 23, 2023 |
Is what makes me unable to form an unbiased general attitude even if unbiased attitudes are humanly possible. Just yesterday, I had to translate a legal opinion on matters that had to do with U. S. tax law. If anyone doesn't know, their body of tax law is huge and full of terms that you can only understand by reading the source texts (which may well be hard to find) because they don't appear in dictionaries (or maybe they do, but the translations usually tend to make no sense) and nobody writes... See more Is what makes me unable to form an unbiased general attitude even if unbiased attitudes are humanly possible. Just yesterday, I had to translate a legal opinion on matters that had to do with U. S. tax law. If anyone doesn't know, their body of tax law is huge and full of terms that you can only understand by reading the source texts (which may well be hard to find) because they don't appear in dictionaries (or maybe they do, but the translations usually tend to make no sense) and nobody writes about them in your target language, or at least in my target language. What I did was find relevant passages in the IRC, check all the key terms, synthesize the translations, and add a few extra explanations where I thought they were in order. You'll tell me that's because I speak Russian, but mind you, I'm not sure all those terms are common knowledge in France or Germany, for example. People in the U. S. have a cult of money and have invented a monstrous corpus of language that deals with all things money. My point, however, is that tasks of this kind occur all the time in translation. I have to face such tasks and handle them almost every day when translating texts that pertain do different domains of knowledge, and all AI can do with them is give a pitiful squeak. So, I do get puzzled over all the eulogy stuff that gets poured on translation AI. What do people test it on? Blog posts? Granny's letters?
I read the posts that touched on the use of AI in medicine, and what I found remarkable was that the notion of using AI to help human doctors get a clearer picture of what's going on got transformed into the notion of letting AI do the diagnosis. I once read an article that said AI can actually do better than humans at diagnosing health condtions (especially given the routine I heard was followed in the U. S. where a doctor would diagnose a condition by going through a questionnaire created by insurance companies; don't know how true this is though), but there was the problem that it couldn't explain its diagnosis because the process by which it was obtained would be too complex, so there were two options: either you invent controls that would make AI more stupid or you fling yourself on AI's mercy. Don't know what people in medicine have to say about their portion of the AI world
[Edited at 2023-11-23 11:21 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Chris Spurgin
United Kingdom
Local time: 19:39
Member (2016)
Russian to English
+ ...
| Wait and see | Nov 23, 2023 |
I am generally wary of big predictions in either direction. I think the main thing affecting translators at the moment is low economic growth across advanced economies. AI might be able to do amazing things in the future but I don't really think about it. I am not going to waste my time getting excited or angry either way.
Am I thinking about professional development? Yes, but we should all be thinking of that anyway.
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| Mixed feelings | Nov 23, 2023 |
I don't hate it, but I don't use it either, since translation is something I enjoy doing entirely by myself.
AI is a fine tool that can be useful, it's not all that threatening by itself. However, agencies are spinning a narrative that pushes AI to be seen as "just as good, if not better" than human translations. They know very well this is false, but if they can make everyone believe that AI is already doing 99% of our job, it can justify rates being pushed down even more.
... See more I don't hate it, but I don't use it either, since translation is something I enjoy doing entirely by myself.
AI is a fine tool that can be useful, it's not all that threatening by itself. However, agencies are spinning a narrative that pushes AI to be seen as "just as good, if not better" than human translations. They know very well this is false, but if they can make everyone believe that AI is already doing 99% of our job, it can justify rates being pushed down even more.
As usual, the issue is not the tool, but what it is used for and by whom. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Balanced view | Nov 24, 2023 |
Denis Fesik wrote:
Don't know what people in medicine have to say about their portion of the AI world
There's an easy way to find out.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=artificial%20intelligence
Well, maybe not that easy
Disclaimer: I have no medical training, but I have worked with a lot of medical texts over the last decades and I've had discussions with doctors and medical researchers about these issues.
AI can perform some clinical tasks better than humans. One of the most striking examples is the analysis of medical images, while there is evidence that AI can get substantially more diagnostic information from a standard electrocardiogram than the typical human physician can.
But there's a downside: the AI's tend to get a higher rate of false positives, i.e. seeing something that isn't there, whereas humans tend to have a higher rate of false negatives, i.e. failing to see something that is there.
This is veering off topic, so let me try to steer it back. The ideal solution in these cases would seem to be combining the human and AI contributions so that the strengths of one can compensate for the weaknesses of the other. The same could apply to our own profession.
But instead of either throwing our arms up in horror, or opening them wide to embrace AI without question, in translation, as in medicine, a more prudent reaction would be to consider in which ways the use of this new software (which is not "intelligent" in the usual sense of the word) might enhance and facilitate our own performance, taking into account its capabilities and its limitations.
| | | | | Where is the benefit? | Nov 24, 2023 |
Philip Lees wrote:
But instead of either throwing our arms up in horror, or opening them wide to embrace AI without question, in translation, as in medicine, a more prudent reaction would be to consider in which ways the use of this new software (which is not "intelligent" in the usual sense of the word) might enhance and facilitate our own performance, taking into account its capabilities and its limitations.
That’s the thing. In what ways can it help without replacing us?
As far as I can see, ChatGPT can be used for three things in translation: to translate text, to research terms, and to rewrite text.
Or, in reality: to produce a first draft, to make up stuff, and to write pastiches of different styles
Using AI to perform MT might be good if all you want to do is make money and you don’t mind just being an editor.
If, on the other hand, you want to be a translator, as I do, AI has little or nothing to offer.
And at the same time as being pretty useless for us, it is stealing our work, both directly and indirectly. What is not to hate about it?
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