Chutes and ladders -Thoughts about 2023

 

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2023 has not been a simple year, including for the residents of the Middle East and translators. To be blunt, it has been a year of earthquakes of the existential type. Collecting my thoughts, the two must powerful forces have been artificial intelligence and, for too many of us, the Gaza War. They have tested the faith in the future but I have also seen a much quieter but no less powerful force: the ability of the human mind to focus on a problem and improve reality.

ChatGPT in its many forms has hit the world like a sledgehammer. I will not even claim that I fully understand the techniques and manner of using it but I do have some, if limited, comprehension of the effect. The capacity to allow an algorithm to create a reality according to custom-made requirements is an amazing tool. Millions of people, including professionals, use it as an active tool. However, as a translator, I do not feel threatened because, while it creates a virtual reality, a verisimilitude, its outcomes may have nothing to do with reality. I suggest asking an IA engine of your choice to provide details of your life. You will discover some amazing facts. To be fair, fantasy is a powerful engine for creating reality. Think about how many gadgets on the Star Trek series have become everyday products, including cell phones and universal translators. However, this year too many people forgot how it is not human. Think about how often people accept doctored pictures as proof. In the courts, almost amusingly, Michael Cohen invented some legal cases sympathetic to his case using AI and sent them to his lawyer, who cited them. The judge was not amused. Even in translations, it is sad to say that a few so-called translators believe that unedited machine translation is actually how people write. My wife just spent seven hours rewriting a Google-translate text that should have required some 2 hours to edit if the translator had actually done the work. Children understand that Wile E. Coyote cannot actually survive having a rock fall on him. Their parents should be aware that artificial intelligence is just that, artificial.

On a more tragic note, the Gaza War, or whatever name it will receive in the history books, has created an enormous human tragedy and still is at the time of writing. The number of dead, wounded and traumatized  victims in Israel and, yes, Gaza, Syria and Lebanon is heartbreaking. The economic damage will have an impact for a decade. On an even sadder note for me, the intensity of pure, unbridled hatred that the war has unleased has shaken the belief in the essential goodness of human beings. It is, again, okay to wish the death of anybody that disagrees with you. This wave of hate goes far beyond the borders of the Middle East and is impacting most of the world. It makes it appear that human beings have made no progress and maybe regressed over the centuries. I find that destructive urge, whether in words or acts, extremely distressing.

On the other side, through conferences I have attended, I have encountered, physically and virtually, so many people that dedicate their lives to solving small problems and find beautiful solutions. There are countless academics delving in the intricacies of fascinating processes not because of the money but because they want to enrich their mind and the world, although they do not reject money, of course. I have seen the work of so many translators who invest disproportional time to find the absolute translation not because it matters to the customer but because they believe that translation is an art and, thus, is worthy of the effort to reach people and perfection. It is this ability to ignore the macro and focus on the micro that gives me hope for a better world as complicated situations are solved one step at a time.

With a bit of a heavy heart, I try to look optimistically to the future. Artificial intelligence will not disappear but people hopefully will learn how to apply its usefulness and recognize its limitations. The Gaza war will end at some time, one way or another. People will rebuild their lives, albeit as different people than they were before the war. What will not change is that the silent majority will continue to find solutions to small problems and, knowingly or unknowingly, make the world a better place. In short, let’s hope for a gentler 2024.

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