Will Machine Learning AI Make Human Translators An Endangered Species?

Translating between human languages is something which artificial intelligence – specifically machine learning – has proven to be very competent at. So much so that the CEO of one of the world's largest employers of human translators has warned that many of them should be facing up to the stark reality of losing their job to a machine. One Hour Translation CEO Ofer Shoshan told me that within one to three years, neural machine technology (NMT) translators will carry out more than 50% of the work handled by the $40 billion market. His words stand in stark contrast to the often-repeated maxim that, in the near future at least, artificial intelligence will primarily augment, rather than replace, human professionals. Shoshan told me that the quality of machine translation has improved by leaps and bounds in recent years, to the point where half a million human translators and 21,000 agencies could soon find themselves out of work.