5 ms·

Isn't replacing people with machines what we've been doing uninterrupted since the beginning of the industrial revolution ? In what sense is replacing a transla

Isn't replacing people with machines what we've been doing uninterrupted since the beginning of the industrial revolution ? In what sense is replacing a translator with DeepL different from replacing a farmer with a tractor ? We've gone from more than two third of the population working on the fields to less than 5% and people still have jobs. What has changed that makes us think that this time it will be different ?

ianhawes 8y ago
Please do not tell people about DeepL.
- hammock 8y ago
  Why? I'm fascinated by any meaningful, superior-quality tech innovation these days that doesn't come from FAANG or a pre-existing unicorn. There don't seem to be many.
- wallflower 8y ago
  One of my friends who does Spanish tutoring also does “clean up” of automated translations to make them sound native-speaker like. Según her, DeepL is not bad but not great. If you use an automated translation for important communications, native speakers will be able to tell and may even be offended that the company did not bother to use the services of a quality translator. One example from the NYTimes. English: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/style/modern-love-how-i-met-my-children.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/style/modern-love-how-i-m... Spanish: https://www.nytimes.com/es/2018/09/28/modern-love-donador-esperma/ https://www.nytimes.com/es/2018/09/28/modern-love-donador-es... Excerpt #1 Original English: > A couple of years ago I began seeing ads for 23andMe, a service that analyzes your saliva — you spit in a test tube and mail it off for analysis — and provides you with information about ancestry, health and DNA relatives. Translated Spanish via DeepL: > Hace un par de años comencé a ver anuncios de 23andMe, un servicio que analiza tu saliva - escupes en un tubo de ensayo y lo envías por correo para analizarlo - y te proporciona información sobre ascendencia, salud y parientes ADN. Translated Spanish (professional translator): > Hace un par de años, comencé a ver anuncios de 23andMe, un servicio que analiza tu saliva —la pones en un tubo de ensayo y lo mandas por correo para que se analice— y te da la información de tus ancestros, salud y familiares según tu ADN. DeepL’s translation has the same faults as other services. Namely, in Spanish, object pronouns are very important. In the sentence describing how he sent a saliva sample, the DeepL translation does not use pronouns correctly like a native speaker would. Also, it stumbles on what is the most common vernacular. The DeepL translation does not use the right way to say “DNA relatives” which is “familiares según tu ADN”. “Según” is commonly used to denote authority of a source or in other words “according to”.
AmericanChopper 8y ago
Because “world continually gets better over time” isn’t a headline that gets clicks. But one that makes people afraid of something does. That fear is also a great way of promoting a number of different political agendas, which is why you’ll see all sorts of people stirring it up.
- pseudolus 8y ago
  The "world continually gets better over time" is historically a relatively new concept. There are many periods in human history where things have significantly worsened. As they say in finance - past performance is not indicative of future results.
  - AmericanChopper 8y ago
    >There are many periods in human history where things have significantly worsened Sure, which is why I said over time. If you look at any isolated period you’re not going to see any trends that take place over longer periods of time. The standard of living world wide goes up over time, and has done so at a very accelerated rate since the industrial revolution. The world is generally becoming a better place, it’s much better than it was 100 years ago, and still even better than it was 10 years ago. New technology, and the progress of emerging economies makes life better for the whole world. There’s plenty of people who have an interest in selling fear, especially when it comes to technology, but that deception has been around for as long as technology itself. They said all the same things about mechanization back then as they say about automation now. The sad truth is that good news is critically dangerous to too many people with agendas, that it’ll end up getting ignored or denied with ignorant passion.
    - pseudolus 8y ago
      Over the long term it's entirely possible that the current historically anomalous growth rate might be maintained but it's of little comfort to me and, say my children and grandchildren, that my great grandchildren will be living in the land of milk and honey if immediate generations are consigned to some kind of economic purgatory. The negative slopes and valleys that appear, but don't necessarily dominate economic charts, represent people. It's cold comfort to someone, or even a generation, at the bottom of a chart to know that "on average" things will work out.
pseudolus 8y ago
One of the issues is the fairly short timescale over which this is happening. The other is that no credible alternative has emerged as to what role displaced workers, and ultimately their descendants, will have in a society that will be unable to offer employment opportunities. This situation can be distinguished from the reduction in the farm population where farm workers were readily redeployed to the industrial/factory sectors. There are a lot important questions that will need to be answered in a very short time. Where will the future unemployed be redeployed? Will the lack of employment lead to instability and civil strife? What about social mobility and advancement? Will the inequality gap worsen?
- overtone 8y ago
  > Where will the future unemployed be redeployed? Pay attention to which jobs currently pay well, those jobs are the most likely to get pressure from surplus labor. There's also a big and growing demand for health care and care for the elderly. I doubt that automation will truly replace such a massive amount of labor as some predict, but even if it does, that will cause an equally strong lowering of the cost of living, requiring less labor to live, cheapening welfare, etc.
jackcosgrove 8y ago
Human civilization moved at a snail's pace for millennia until industrialization. Machines however have seen explosive growth in capability since the 18th century. The human body is like a Swiss Army knife that can perform many tasks well, but if I want to cut through a 2x4 I'll use a circular saw and if I want to butter my bread I'll use a butter knife. Machines permit greater specialization and differentiation than do our bodies. The trend lines of the capabilities of man and machine seem clear to me.
gotocake 8y ago
Replacing people with machines isn’t, and has never been the problem. Telling generations of people who depend on the jobs they have to suck it up and move out of the way of progress without good recourse is. Shrugging and telling people to make do with two or three “gig” jobs is a bullshit answer to their concerns, as are empty suggestions to retrain or find a new job. People don’t work a coal face because it’s fun, but because it’s what they know how to do, and it brings home the bacon. So if you want people to do more than spit on us as we pass, we should put effort into ensuring a safety net for them when the work we domtskes their livliehood away. Right now that doesn’t happen, the wealth just accumulates at the top while we suckle drops of it when it “trickles down” on us. It’s easy to talk about how machines will give us more free time, because we can afford it.
- overtone 8y ago
  > People don’t work a coal face because it’s fun, but because it’s what they know how to do, and it brings home the bacon. Far more than that, coal workers take pride in their work, it's part of their identity and it commands a certain degree of respect as being "hard labor". If it was just about "bringing home the bacon" they might as well take any other job. This is in contrast to working for Wal-Mart or McDonalds, there's no pride in it, it's not part of people's identity. People want to move on from these jobs, but there are less and less opportunities to move on to. > So if you want people to do more than spit on us as we pass, we should put effort into ensuring a safety net for them when the work we domtskes their livliehood away. A safety net is well and good, but if people lose their jobs and get stuck in the net, it destroys them. Again, it's about pride and identity.
  - bksenior 8y ago
    Eh. This seems fluffy. This seems more like the Industrial Revolution + Twitter. Just like all the studies that the world is technically better off in every modern metric of improvement (poverty, starvation, mobility..etc, but things feel shitty because you are forced to read about the one dude kidnapping and eating children one state over, I think it's probably just amplified fears (and ultimately seperation of teams) than it was during other large periods of change. It's also worth noting that people dont die, jobs just shift unexpectedly. Sure it can crush a generation (see the american midwest from 1960-2020), but most people move to where the work is geographically and intellectually or just die out.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
sgt101 8y ago
Have we replaced translators? Is there a single book translation that has been commercially published that was done by a machine? In diplomacy or negotiations does anyone dare to use a machine translator? I agree that for tourism and casual use machine translators are brilliant, but for the use cases where people needed to pay in the past do they not still pay a person?
- yorwba 8y ago
  They need to pay a person, but that person can start with a machine-translated text and only needs to edit the parts where the machine failed. So the same amount of text can be translated using fewer translators. Although the machine can't do everything a human translator does, it can still partially replace them, just as technology has partially replaced humans before (think a dozen guys with shovels vs. one with an excavator).
  - sgt101 8y ago
    Well - sorta in some use cases; my suspicion is that translators working in this way find most of what the machine can do marginal in value.

ianhawes 8y ago

Please do not tell people about DeepL.

hammock 8y ago
Why? I'm fascinated by any meaningful, superior-quality tech innovation these days that doesn't come from FAANG or a pre-existing unicorn. There don't seem to be many.
wallflower 8y ago
One of my friends who does Spanish tutoring also does “clean up” of automated translations to make them sound native-speaker like. Según her, DeepL is not bad but not great. If you use an automated translation for important communications, native speakers will be able to tell and may even be offended that the company did not bother to use the services of a quality translator. One example from the NYTimes. English: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/style/modern-love-how-i-met-my-children.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/style/modern-love-how-i-m... Spanish: https://www.nytimes.com/es/2018/09/28/modern-love-donador-esperma/ https://www.nytimes.com/es/2018/09/28/modern-love-donador-es... Excerpt #1 Original English: > A couple of years ago I began seeing ads for 23andMe, a service that analyzes your saliva — you spit in a test tube and mail it off for analysis — and provides you with information about ancestry, health and DNA relatives. Translated Spanish via DeepL: > Hace un par de años comencé a ver anuncios de 23andMe, un servicio que analiza tu saliva - escupes en un tubo de ensayo y lo envías por correo para analizarlo - y te proporciona información sobre ascendencia, salud y parientes ADN. Translated Spanish (professional translator): > Hace un par de años, comencé a ver anuncios de 23andMe, un servicio que analiza tu saliva —la pones en un tubo de ensayo y lo mandas por correo para que se analice— y te da la información de tus ancestros, salud y familiares según tu ADN. DeepL’s translation has the same faults as other services. Namely, in Spanish, object pronouns are very important. In the sentence describing how he sent a saliva sample, the DeepL translation does not use pronouns correctly like a native speaker would. Also, it stumbles on what is the most common vernacular. The DeepL translation does not use the right way to say “DNA relatives” which is “familiares según tu ADN”. “Según” is commonly used to denote authority of a source or in other words “according to”.

AmericanChopper 8y ago

Because “world continually gets better over time” isn’t a headline that gets clicks. But one that makes people afraid of something does. That fear is also a great way of promoting a number of different political agendas, which is why you’ll see all sorts of people stirring it up.

pseudolus 8y ago
The "world continually gets better over time" is historically a relatively new concept. There are many periods in human history where things have significantly worsened. As they say in finance - past performance is not indicative of future results.
- AmericanChopper 8y ago
  >There are many periods in human history where things have significantly worsened Sure, which is why I said over time. If you look at any isolated period you’re not going to see any trends that take place over longer periods of time. The standard of living world wide goes up over time, and has done so at a very accelerated rate since the industrial revolution. The world is generally becoming a better place, it’s much better than it was 100 years ago, and still even better than it was 10 years ago. New technology, and the progress of emerging economies makes life better for the whole world. There’s plenty of people who have an interest in selling fear, especially when it comes to technology, but that deception has been around for as long as technology itself. They said all the same things about mechanization back then as they say about automation now. The sad truth is that good news is critically dangerous to too many people with agendas, that it’ll end up getting ignored or denied with ignorant passion.
  - pseudolus 8y ago
    Over the long term it's entirely possible that the current historically anomalous growth rate might be maintained but it's of little comfort to me and, say my children and grandchildren, that my great grandchildren will be living in the land of milk and honey if immediate generations are consigned to some kind of economic purgatory. The negative slopes and valleys that appear, but don't necessarily dominate economic charts, represent people. It's cold comfort to someone, or even a generation, at the bottom of a chart to know that "on average" things will work out.

pseudolus 8y ago

One of the issues is the fairly short timescale over which this is happening. The other is that no credible alternative has emerged as to what role displaced workers, and ultimately their descendants, will have in a society that will be unable to offer employment opportunities. This situation can be distinguished from the reduction in the farm population where farm workers were readily redeployed to the industrial/factory sectors. There are a lot important questions that will need to be answered in a very short time. Where will the future unemployed be redeployed? Will the lack of employment lead to instability and civil strife? What about social mobility and advancement? Will the inequality gap worsen?

overtone 8y ago
> Where will the future unemployed be redeployed? Pay attention to which jobs currently pay well, those jobs are the most likely to get pressure from surplus labor. There's also a big and growing demand for health care and care for the elderly. I doubt that automation will truly replace such a massive amount of labor as some predict, but even if it does, that will cause an equally strong lowering of the cost of living, requiring less labor to live, cheapening welfare, etc.

jackcosgrove 8y ago

Human civilization moved at a snail's pace for millennia until industrialization. Machines however have seen explosive growth in capability since the 18th century. The human body is like a Swiss Army knife that can perform many tasks well, but if I want to cut through a 2x4 I'll use a circular saw and if I want to butter my bread I'll use a butter knife. Machines permit greater specialization and differentiation than do our bodies. The trend lines of the capabilities of man and machine seem clear to me.

gotocake 8y ago

Replacing people with machines isn’t, and has never been the problem. Telling generations of people who depend on the jobs they have to suck it up and move out of the way of progress without good recourse is. Shrugging and telling people to make do with two or three “gig” jobs is a bullshit answer to their concerns, as are empty suggestions to retrain or find a new job. People don’t work a coal face because it’s fun, but because it’s what they know how to do, and it brings home the bacon. So if you want people to do more than spit on us as we pass, we should put effort into ensuring a safety net for them when the work we domtskes their livliehood away. Right now that doesn’t happen, the wealth just accumulates at the top while we suckle drops of it when it “trickles down” on us. It’s easy to talk about how machines will give us more free time, because we can afford it.

overtone 8y ago
> People don’t work a coal face because it’s fun, but because it’s what they know how to do, and it brings home the bacon. Far more than that, coal workers take pride in their work, it's part of their identity and it commands a certain degree of respect as being "hard labor". If it was just about "bringing home the bacon" they might as well take any other job. This is in contrast to working for Wal-Mart or McDonalds, there's no pride in it, it's not part of people's identity. People want to move on from these jobs, but there are less and less opportunities to move on to. > So if you want people to do more than spit on us as we pass, we should put effort into ensuring a safety net for them when the work we domtskes their livliehood away. A safety net is well and good, but if people lose their jobs and get stuck in the net, it destroys them. Again, it's about pride and identity.
- bksenior 8y ago
  Eh. This seems fluffy. This seems more like the Industrial Revolution + Twitter. Just like all the studies that the world is technically better off in every modern metric of improvement (poverty, starvation, mobility..etc, but things feel shitty because you are forced to read about the one dude kidnapping and eating children one state over, I think it's probably just amplified fears (and ultimately seperation of teams) than it was during other large periods of change. It's also worth noting that people dont die, jobs just shift unexpectedly. Sure it can crush a generation (see the american midwest from 1960-2020), but most people move to where the work is geographically and intellectually or just die out.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

sgt101 8y ago

Have we replaced translators? Is there a single book translation that has been commercially published that was done by a machine? In diplomacy or negotiations does anyone dare to use a machine translator? I agree that for tourism and casual use machine translators are brilliant, but for the use cases where people needed to pay in the past do they not still pay a person?

yorwba 8y ago
They need to pay a person, but that person can start with a machine-translated text and only needs to edit the parts where the machine failed. So the same amount of text can be translated using fewer translators. Although the machine can't do everything a human translator does, it can still partially replace them, just as technology has partially replaced humans before (think a dozen guys with shovels vs. one with an excavator).
- sgt101 8y ago
  Well - sorta in some use cases; my suspicion is that translators working in this way find most of what the machine can do marginal in value.