Why AI-powered translation needs a lot of work

The latest scare story around the rise of robots is that within 120 years all human jobs will be automated. If that study from Oxford University is to be believed, we're just 3 to 4 generations away from perpetual holiday. The report goes on to predict when AI will outperform humans and -- more interestingly -- how. Some aspects will be of genuine concern to certain industries: AI will be a better driver than human heavy goods vehicles drivers by 2027, AI will write better novels than we can by 2049, and, closest to today, AI will be better at translation by 2024. AI has the potential to significantly reshape the translation sector, as it's doing to many other industries already. However, given that the last time human translators were pitted against machine translation (in February) that 90 percent of the automated translation was judged "grammatically awkward," that is a bold prediction.