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I have still not seen, firsthand, someone lose their job to "AI". Parts and pieces, sure. But when the entire Venn diagram of 'this job' is laid out, it require

by 1970-01-01 1y ago

I have still not seen, firsthand, someone lose their job to "AI". Parts and pieces, sure. But when the entire Venn diagram of 'this job' is laid out, it requires a cerebellum connection at some point. A vivid picture of someone's job being totally dissolved to AI is missing.

layer8 1y ago
I know translators that have. Not because there’s nothing left to do for humans in quality translation, but because demand and compensation dropped so much that you can’t make a living from it anymore.
- 1970-01-01 1y ago
  This is a great point. I would make the counterargument that app translators doing simple transactions of languageA to languageB for $X was possible a decade ago. AI certainly has made that low hanging fruit impossible to capitalize at speed and scale. Since AI has made the easiest part of translator's jobs much harder to monetize, translators can still offer value in lengthy transactions. Books that are to be translated for publishing, legal documents, and languages that are not understood by AI.
  - layer8 1y ago
    The (former) translators I know mostly translated B2B publications (brochures, specifications, …), commonly containing specialized domain vocabulary. Certainly not low-hanging fruit. I’m sure AI can’t make a quality job on those without guidance and review by a speaker of both languages knowledgeable in the respective domain. Nevertheless, the market for such translations has dried up, and those that remain only pay a pittance. Part of the reason likely is that the perception that translation is valuable work has changed.
    - brainwad 1y ago
      It's because the marginal value of idiomatic human translations, over robotic and partially bad machine translations, is not actually that high. Especially not for B2B where people can accept poor prose from a trading partner.
      - layer8 1y ago
        The important thing is for the technical details and terms to be correct, otherwise it might be false advertising, or the spec for what you are requesting might be wrong. And you can’t rely on AI to be reliably accurate in that, or for the translation even to make sense technically.
ben_w 1y ago
The first electronic computers were referred to as "electronic brains": https://vintagecomputer.net/simon.cfm https://vintagecomputer.net/simon.cfm "Computer" used to be a job. Not anymore: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_(occupation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_(occupation) What counts as "AI" is a moving target: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect

layer8 1y ago

I know translators that have. Not because there’s nothing left to do for humans in quality translation, but because demand and compensation dropped so much that you can’t make a living from it anymore.

1970-01-01 1y ago
This is a great point. I would make the counterargument that app translators doing simple transactions of languageA to languageB for $X was possible a decade ago. AI certainly has made that low hanging fruit impossible to capitalize at speed and scale. Since AI has made the easiest part of translator's jobs much harder to monetize, translators can still offer value in lengthy transactions. Books that are to be translated for publishing, legal documents, and languages that are not understood by AI.
- layer8 1y ago
  The (former) translators I know mostly translated B2B publications (brochures, specifications, …), commonly containing specialized domain vocabulary. Certainly not low-hanging fruit. I’m sure AI can’t make a quality job on those without guidance and review by a speaker of both languages knowledgeable in the respective domain. Nevertheless, the market for such translations has dried up, and those that remain only pay a pittance. Part of the reason likely is that the perception that translation is valuable work has changed.
  - brainwad 1y ago
    It's because the marginal value of idiomatic human translations, over robotic and partially bad machine translations, is not actually that high. Especially not for B2B where people can accept poor prose from a trading partner.
    - layer8 1y ago
      The important thing is for the technical details and terms to be correct, otherwise it might be false advertising, or the spec for what you are requesting might be wrong. And you can’t rely on AI to be reliably accurate in that, or for the translation even to make sense technically.

ben_w 1y ago

The first electronic computers were referred to as "electronic brains": https://vintagecomputer.net/simon.cfm https://vintagecomputer.net/simon.cfm "Computer" used to be a job. Not anymore: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_(occupation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_(occupation) What counts as "AI" is a moving target: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect