Can AI completely take place of Linguists and human translators?

The market of language learning has always been large and demanding. However, with the emergence of AI technology, the job opportunity for linguists and human translators is avoidlessly shrinking.

The reason why this is happening is primarily because of AI’s efficiency over human beings. For example, when deciphering an unknown ancient language, AI can do a quick and accurate job of matching words from unknown languages to related words, or cognates, in languages that share the same root through the divised algorithm.

Whereas, AI also has limitations when handling this kind of work. If you cannot feed the algorithm with enough data, which most lost languages usually do not have, AIs may have a problem learning the pattern and they might fail the work. What’s more, due to the subjectivity and of human language and a huge amount of implicatures in human languages, the semantics of human languages is still very hard for AIs to precisely grasp just as all those everyday easy misunderstandings between human beings and Siris and Google home.

Therefore, I hold a point that in the future, AI translators will not engulf linguists and human translators’ jobs because AIs will always need them to perfect their understanding of human languages, while linguists and human translators, as Amy He holds(2019), would need AIs to improve the efficiency of work. Both sides would work together in the end.

References:
https://apple.news/A51C0T2_XN–z5t9CfeeKnQ

https://www.emarketer.com/content/how-ai-and-machine-translation-are-changing-the-language-services-industry

One thought on “Can AI completely take place of Linguists and human translators?

  1. Great point on the part where humans and AI need to coexist for each other!
    It got me to think about all the jobs that the AI are taking over and how humans are becoming replaceable. Apparently in 15 years, 40%of our jobs will be replace with an AI of some sort.1 The jobs that are irreplaceable are the ones that deal with humans. As indicated in the first article, ” He suggests we let machines be machines and let humans do what we do best: be human.”2
    However, this also led me to think what does “being human” entail? The 10 jobs that are thought to be irreplaceable are human resource managers, sales managers, marketing managers, public relations managers, chief executives, event planners, writers, software developers, editors and graphic designers.1
    This all deals with human interactions and cannot be replaced due to it being somewhat unpredictable or appeals directly to human emotions. I think the “being human” part of the second article comes into play here. Where statistics cannot be made, equations are not applicable, is where the human will have success with thriving in.
    Some might say that I am viewing the world through rose-tinted glasses. But I always think we should be optimistic about the future. AI is being developed at such a pace that we are doing a lot of things at the same time. While we should prepare for the worst I think the AI will bring more good than harm. If becoming human is a way for us to flourish, I feel like now will be a good time for us to really explore that side of humanity!

    1 https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/jobs-artificial-intelligence-will-replace

    2 https://www.inc.com/carmine-gallo/an-ai-expert-told-60-minutes-that-ai-could-replace-40-percent-of-jobs-heres-part-he-left-out.html

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