Predictions that AI is a bubble that will shortly burst are becoming more common. These predictions appear to be not from investors, but rather mostly from people who stand to lose if AI succeeds.
The bubble for AI investors might indeed burst someday, but it is clear that AI has already succeeded in significantly reducing the need for translation brokers to purchase translations from professional translators, and the brokers are replacing professionals by using AI to create translations in-house, and then having them post-edited. The result has been that some professionals have been left with little translation work, have been reduced to doing low-paid post-editing, or have simply left translation as a way of making a living. These outcomes are a measure of AI’s success.
Professional translators, rather than anticipating with joy the bursting of the AI bubble, should think about current ways to survive in their chosen field of endeavor, in which the work sources (translation brokers) for the majority of freelancers are already rapidly replacing professional translators with AI systems they use themselves.
Neither freelance translators nor their organizations are giving sufficient attention and thought to this situation. Their focus appears to be on pointing out the failings of AI or claiming without evidence that everything will be fine if translators just “adapt” to the new technology. It is clear that things will not be fine and, in fact, it is clear that the model of freelancers getting translation work from brokers is already crumbling. The boiling frogs need to hop out of the AI pot before it is too late.