Category: Technology

Various technology topics, not limited to the overhyped AI nonsense.

Shameful and non-shameful use of AI

I don’t use AI when translating documents for clients, for the simply reason that I don’t need AI to translate, I don’t like the translations it produces, and I’m the translator I present to my client as the person who cares about and will execute the translations of their documents. Using AI would be a betrayal.

Translation-brokering agencies, which are well along in their replacement of human professionals with AI—and that leaves former translators with only extremely low-paid and mind-numbing post-editing work—are in a different situation.

The reason is simple. Almost all translation that is paid for by translation consumers is done by entities that are not themselves involved in executing translations, beyond purchasing the translations and then, if necessary, purchasing editing thereof before selling them. That is the case now, and it has been the case for many years, from long before humans found themselves being replaced by AI. Since entities that sell translation are only very rarely involved in doing translations, it makes sense for them to move away from expensive human professionals, and they are succeeding in that move.

Top Page of my company website

That said, for a process or task that I do not purport to do myself or sell to clients as a practitioner, I am more willing to use AI. If you look in the upper-right corner of my company website pages, you will see a hamburger menu icon. I have manually written the HTML for my considerable number of webpages for many years, resisting adding such a feature, not understanding how to do it, either with or without JavaScript. I gave in the other day and used Claude.ai to build that feature into my website. It took less than three minutes to obtain the required patch of html markup and the associated JavaScript, required no cash outlay, and it gave me what I needed with just a plain-language prompt of about three lines describing what I wanted.

There is a putative environmental impact—it is much smaller, of course, than the impact resulting from building a fake video of a deceased celebrity or a dancing cat—but I am not at all ashamed I did that. That would not be the case if I were in the business of selling webpage designs.

Returning to translation, the translations I do are mine and will continue that way, as I continue to resist the mindless rush into a world where translators surrender to AI-using brokers and professionals of all sorts outsource not only their writing but also their thinking to a collection of software commands. That’s not my style, and I cannot see that changing anytime soon.

More AI Snake Oil

In a recent BBC report of an interview with Google (Alphabet) boss Sundar Pichai, we see Pichai repeating the nonsense spewed by numerous AI tech bros in attempts to allay fears of AI disruption.

Pichai says that AI will also affect work as we know it, calling it “the most profound technology” humankind had worked on. Well, perhaps that part of his comments is correct.

“We will have to work through societal disruptions,” he said, adding that it would also “create new opportunities”.

One person’s manageable disruption is another’s total disastrous loss of earning power.

There are people who have been successful in a number of specific careers who will not be offered or be able to take those “new opportunities.” Many are already being deprived of work and income, by being replaced by AI. Opportunities will be provided to others, perhaps, but certain careers will simply disappear; translation is one of them. Change is coming much too fast for some groups to keep up. The notion that translation will continue as a career is clearly delusional.

“It will evolve and transition certain jobs, and people will need to adapt,” he said. Those who do adapt to AI “will do better”.

Transition? Adapt? What do translators transition to and how do they adapt? By accepting post-editing work at one-fifth the word rate (and certainly not anywhere near a compensating five-fold increase in throughput)? And that doesn’t even address the issue of mind-numbing post-editing work. Most translators will not be able to survive by adapting to AI or even adopting AI themselves, because they have been habitualized by their clients to working only for a client demographic one tier above them on the food chain, and that client demographic is currently using AI to replace them. Freelancers have arguably allowed themselves to be isolated from translation consumers that have not yet adopted AI. AI will be of no avail without clients that are not using AI, and that includes acting as the “human in the loop,” the snake oil sold by the major translation brokers that control most of the translation market.

“It doesn’t matter whether you want to be a teacher [or] a doctor. All those professions will be around, but the people who will do well in each of those professions are people who learn how to use these tools.”

This could very well be true for some professions. As noted above, however, freelance translating is not one of them, as is already being demonstrated to be the case, with large numbers of translators trapped into non-translation functions that pay extremely poorly, if they even have that left as their clients replace them with AI.

The outlook is bleak. More and more translators are coming to realize that, but numerous translation organizations appear to hang onto the delusion that this storm can be ridden out; it cannot. When it passes, it will leave a barren wasteland in its path, with very few translators left standing.

And just when I thought people couldn’t get any dumber…

Someone actually wrote this in a public post on the LinkedIn social media platform (and it is a social media platform):

And now, I feel like NOT using AI to help you edit, tighten ‘grafs or offer a reality check is sort of like using a typewriter when everyone else is using a Word Processor or Word Perfect or MS Word.

Asking AI to do a reality check? This is a breathtakingly dumb thing to say in an attempt to demonstrate that the author is “embracing” the technology.