AI translators - what do they mean for human translators?, have AI translators/interpreters become tools in the hands of human translators/interpreters or a way of cost cutting for managers?

              AI is the new buzzword in every domain under the sun. Even if anyone does stuff manually like manually copying content to an Excel file for instance, those who use AI look down on them as if they are fools when AI tools can help them copy huge volumes of data to target files in the blink of an eye, saving lots of time in the process. Sure, to those who use AI, it appears like the smart way to get things done and save lots of time in the process supposedly for "other more important activities". AI tools' ability to handle repetitive tasks in a way that makes time as an irrelevant factor at work is something that is used in a variety of fields from images to textual content. When we talk of textual content in particular, one area where people have started using AI tools extensively is AI translation tools which are able to provide content which is on par with human translation in terms of quality and accuracy and as the background of each translation AI keeps improving, so does the quality and accuracy of translation. While translators can use such AI translation tools to improve translation speed and then correct the accuracy of the translations. This eventually means that the role of a translator/interpreter gets reduced to that of a mere overseer of the quality of the translated/interpreted content but does it really end there. We will compare what the AI translation/interpretation tech gurus tell us and after that the actual ground reality of what AI does and what it means to the people involved in the translation/interpretation domains.

i) What the tech gurus tell us :   

                    AI is an important tool and the way of the future, we are told by the gurus who claim to know it all and we are urged to learn and develop skills in AI besides other areas where our work would be more inclined and oriented towards that of an overseer of machines using AI because the latter would soon take over all repetitive tasks which were formerly done or performed by humans. While this is the truth in the light of what has been taking place in many fields across the board, the tech gurus seem to be out-of-touch with the actual scenario pertaining to jobs that have been taken over by AI including translation and interpretation. We are told that AI would do translations and interpretations which it does as there are countless AI translation tools in the market whose capabilities are consistently and endlessly being upgraded and groomed by human translators and interpreters but the idea that human translators and interpreters would still be needed, no matter how advanced the AI translation/interpretation tool is not something which is followed by every person that a translator/interpreter would see as a translation provider in the business sense.

ii) Ground reality of what happens with managers (because of AI) who would otherwise, usually provide business to a translation body like a translation/interpretation team:

                  While the AI pundits seem to be quite at ease with the thought that language-based AI translation and interpretation tools would always need human guidance to improve the quality of their output either through grooming by human translators or interpreters either at AI programming level or at review level, they seem to be totally unaware of the plight of teams of translators or interpreters who get reduced or no work at all from their clients for the very same reason that those clients feel that they can use AI to translate and give them content of better quality and save money for their respective departments in a given company in the name of cost cutting by doing the self-review themselves instead of having to send work to an exclusive team of experienced translators who have had years of experience working on documentation and gained so much knowledge only to see all of that being made redundant at an organisational level by seeing their teams being shut down overnight or because of reduced workflows owing to their customers using AI translators and reviewing that translation work themselves instead of giving them work as was the case earlier on. This has most certainly been the case with many translation agencies and teams in well-established organisations who stopped getting work because of such managerial decisions to cut costs on the side of their clients. Suddenly, those who find themselves jobless and are thrust into the unknown of having to acquire new skills, find themselves at the crossroads of having to learn something that they are totally new to which they are clueless about and only those who can force themselves to love such a change, which is by no means a simple endeavour for all, are the ones who are thankfully on the safe side whereas the others find themselves in dire straits of job loss.  

iii) So are AI translation tools a boon or a bane for translators:

                From my personal experience as a translator who found myself in the above scenario of job loss when people in my company who were our team's translation providers from various departments stopped sending us documents in large volumes partly because of the advent of AI which in an of itself was anything but music to my ears, although its benefits from the perspective of my job were merely short-term which I ended up availing only in scenarios involving short deadlines but supplementing such work with my personal review to ensure consistency in terminology across various translation domains, in the end, the disadvantages of the advent of AI outweighed the short-term benefits. Despite this short-term benefit, the widespread use of AI translators by translation providers was the main issue that cost me my job, an issue which was further compounded by other factors to exacerbate the state of our work inflows leading to the decision to push all of us into new, unknown domains. I would see myself as a stark critic and even an enemy of AI-related language translation and interpretation tools because AI did more harm to me as a language-learner who wished to work in the domain of translation and interpretation which have both been unimaginably and irrevocably affected across the world for those seeking permanent career aspirations in translation, interpretation or even in other careers related to languages.

iv) My message to the AI pundits who make empty promises on translation/interpretation jobs being saved despite AI's advent:

          Although AI appeared to be benign enough when it stepped out of the chasm of human intellect into the reality of our everyday world wherein its impact has been nearly ubiquitous and pervasive, these are but its baby steps which have already cost many people their jobs across the world especially in the domains of translation and interpretation that are among the hardest hit which is the true frankensteinian nature of this playful, fluffy entity which at first glance is all nice, respectful and appreciative of people's queries every time they ask a question. We must not forget that certain AI pundits have admitted that AI is there to take over many people's jobs without the whitewashing nonsensical talk about the Darwinian notion of "Survival of the fittest" that the others keep peevishly harping on about.

      I cannot help but reflect about the woes of our children and childrens' children, regardless of how much they learn AI tools to earn money which is touted by many AI tech gurus across the board and bureaucrats alike as the way of the future. Excessive dependence of people on AI language tools hurts their intellectual prowess and their brains' ability to learn languages and develop their critical thinking capabilities and this is not merely limited to language learning because people have now started looking to AI for emotional support with the advent of countless AI boyfriends/girlfriends which makes humans emotionally hooked to an unreal entity masquerading as a person and this can have adverse consequences on how people interact with real-world people in their daily lives. Even normal AI tools like Chat GPT among others seem to make people feel welcome and approved regardless of what their questions are which is not only artificial but is more detrimental to human-to-human interactions besides making humans get addicted to them, when they use them in excess.   

        As this Frankenstein called AI develops from its infancy to adolescence and eventually into adulthood, so will its woes on society and humanity at large grow louder when it finally seeks to outsmart and outwit its creators only to turn against them eventually in countless ways, either through the use of AI by criminals in organised crime which has already become commonplace in our day and age or when it seeks to cause us great, untold misery and harm in one fell swoop at one point when it becomes one with and takes over all the electronic systems in the world from supercomputers to computers controlling mechanical and electrical systems that we all depend on as humans, unless and until AI is classified by all in the world as forbidden knowledge and humanity eschews AI totally and relegates it to the perpetual and bottomless abyss of humanity's cognitive cesspool and buries it beneath a humongous tombstone whence it can never resurface. As for you AI pundits who are deluding the masses, even as you prattle on dogmatically in a logorrhoeic fashion with your Darwinian drivels of "Survival of the fittest" by parroting "adaptability to change" as a panacea to the Frankenstein called AI that you have created, you may think that your white-collar positions in the topmost AI companies give you immunity to the onslaught of this utterly repugnant creation but as you seek to develop this satanic creation called AI further, you will inevitably be sucked into this black hole that you seek to contain within the confines of your supercomputers and computers. I would just like to remind you not to cry out to those less fortunate denizens who were sucked into it and incurred job loss because of your work even as you get sphagettified and inevitably engulfed by it as you are allured by and drift unwillingly further into its void, since there is nothing that we or anyone can do to pull you back as you fall down this AI black hole's endless gravity well, even as you get sucked past its event horizon. My parting words to you - Scr*w AI, Scr*w its creators!