A
fter sitting it out for about a year, I reemerged on social media a few weeks ago. I made sure to notify my loyal connections of my availability and disposition to join the playground again. Barely had I hit enter, and my inbox started to fill with warm, welcoming messages and a flurry of invitations to chat, work, speak, or consult. It felt good to be back in the game.
Chats turned into queries, then projects with a wide variety of businesses and colleagues. While their specifics differ — such as their provenance, size, and vertical — their challenges show a surprising level of commonality. Most of the organizations and people who reached out had (at least) one of three difficulties:
Of these three, the obsession with AI is particularly worrying. It’s a sort of FOMO (fear of missing out) mixed with a rush that often turns into half-baked solutions and products. And anxiety, lots of anxiety.
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AI is a tool that should be understood and contextualized before it is used. It is still, and will forever be, a work-in-progress, and the performance of solutions based on it will be incremental, not final. Failure to understand this leads businesses to overpromise and backtrack when they should be managing expectations and focusing on steady progress.
AI should not become a defining feature of who you are or what you do. Rather, it should be used to enhance how different you are from others. Everyone thinks they have discovered a type of AI gunpowder, only to realize that a slightly different version of their gun has been in use next door for a while.
In language, particularly, we are all exploring the same exact technologies, all the while purporting to have found the Holy Grail. Yet you can’t slice the cake the exact same way and hope to find the chocolate nugget in every bite. Rather than viewing AI as a replacement, companies should be thinking about augmenting, assisting, supporting, and streamlining.
Most of the business leaders I have spoken with realize that what they most badly need is information, data, and market insights — not technology itself. Oh, and creativity. And a superior ability to communicate what makes them special.
If AI is to be a rebirth — a business renaissance — then the first job is to get one’s affairs in order and to do so intentionally, without rushing. A slow-moving camel that doesn’t stop to refuel will beat a cheetah any day in the desert sun. When it comes to AI, the sand beneath our feet is still hot, and the next oasis may lie a hundred dunes away.
Sure enough, on the other side of the AI fence — opposite those who’d rather rush it — you won’t have to look too hard to find people who’d rather have no AI at all. Not on their watch.
That crowd includes anyone who thinks AI has taken, or is in the process of taking, something that belongs to them: fundamental freedoms, privacy, income, and livelihood. It’s mostly people like you and me who are totally reasonable on the surface, but who, for multiple (and often poorly articulated) reasons, will resist on principle anything so intimidatingly powerful and faceless as AI.
They will contemplate it from afar — a meme on their Instagram feed or a fleeting joke. Their pupils may dilate at some of the promises made, but for the most part, they are unimpressed and not in a hurry. And they want to stay that way.
That’s a funny position to be in. Their reluctance often stems from an incomplete understanding of how the technology works mixed with the proverbial fear of the unknown.
Interpreters (the human type, I mean) are often in that camp. They clearly stand to lose a lot, should AI become a preferred (and effective) replacement for what they do (which, if at all possible, won’t happen overnight).
Interpreting, as a profession, is very change-averse. The last major change in the craft dates to 1945 when simultaneous replaced consecutive at the Nuremberg Trials. Then, as now, many of my colleagues contemplated it from afar and shrugged it off as a fleeting joke, one that would perhaps disappear if they looked away. It didn’t. It won’t.
With AI interpreting, there may be wisdom in not going at it too fast. Unless you’re an interpreter, in which case you’re probably moving too slowly.
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To reconcile our fears and not get in the way of progress, we need to exercise an old and human privilege: talking. As openly and transparently as we possibly can, exchanging notes on areas and compromises we can all get behind, and doing our best to determine ethical ways to push forward and away from the lines of fear and haste.
Regardless of our stance, we should be talking. After all, the machines are.
Ewandro Magalhães is a conference interpreter, former chief interpreter in the United Nations system, interpreter trainer, and language technology advocate. He is a TEDx speaker and the author of three books, including The Language Game.
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