Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Talk like a bot by you. Andro McCallan after sitting it out for about a year, I re emerged on social media. A few weeks ago, I made sure to notify my loyal connections of my availability and disposition to join the playground again. Barely had I hit enter and my inbox started to fill with warm welcoming messages and a flurry of invitations to chat, work, speak or consult. It felt good to be back in the game. Chats turned into queries, then projects with a wide variety of businesses and colleagues. While their specifics differ, such as their provenance, size and vertical, their challenges show a surprising level of commonality. Most of the organizations and people who reached out had at least one of three difficulties, breaking out of a plateau as oceans once blew become purple, communicating their uniqueness in a world of lookalikes, making sense of and innovating through artificial intelligence.
[00:00:59] Of these three, the obsession with AI is particularly worrying. Its a sort of FOMO fear of missing out mixed with a rush that often turns into half baked solutions and products. And anxiety. Lots of anxiety.
[00:01:14] When in a hurry, go slow.
[00:01:17] AI is a tool that should be understood and contextualized before it is used. It is still and will forever be a work in progress and the performance of solutions based on it will be incremental, not final. Failure to understand this leads businesses to over promise and backtrack when they should be managing expectations and focusing on steady progress. AI should not become a defining feature of who you are or what you do. Rather it should be used to enhance how different you are from others. Everyone thinks they have discovered a type of AI gunpowder, only to realize that a slightly different version of their gun has been in use next door for a while. In language particularly, we are all exploring the same exact technologies, all the while purporting to have found the holy grail. Yet you can slice the cake the exact same way and hope to find the chocolate nugget in every bite. Rather than viewing AI as a replacement, companies should be thinking about augmenting, assisting, supporting and streamlining. Most of the business leaders I have spoken would realize that what they most badly need is information, data and market insights, not technology itself. Oh, and creativity and a superior ability to communicate what makes them special. If AI is to be a rebirth, a business renaissance, then the first job is to get ones affairs in order and to do so intentionally without rushing a slow moving camel that doesnt stop to refuel will beat a cheater any day in the desert sun. When it comes to AI, the sand beneath our feet is still hot and the next oasis may lie a hundred dunes away.
[00:02:54] How slow is too slow?
[00:02:57] Sure enough, on the other side of the AI fence, opposite those whod rather rush it, you wont have to look too hard to find people whod rather have no AI at all, not on their watch. That crowd includes anyone who thinks AI has taken or is in the process of taking something that belongs to them. Fundamental freedoms privacy, income, and livelihood. Its mostly people like you and me who are totally reasonable on the surface, but who, for multiple and often poorly articulated reasons, will resist, on principle, anything so intimidatingly powerful and faceless as Aihden. They will contemplate it from afar, a meme on their Instagram feed or a fleeting joke. Their pupils may dilate at some of the promises made, but for the most part they are unimpressed and not in a hurry, and they want to stay that way. That's a funny position to be in. Their reluctance often stems from an incomplete understanding of how the technology works mixed with the proverbial fear of the unknown. Interpreters, the human type, I mean, are often in that camp. They clearly stand to lose a lot should AI become a preferred and effective replacement for what they do, which, if at all possible, wont happen overnight. Interpreting as a profession is very change averse. The last major change in the craft dates to 1945, when simultaneous replaced consecutive at the Nuremberg trials. Then, as now, many of my colleagues contemplated it from a fair and shrugged it off as a fleeting joke, one that would perhaps disappear if they looked away. It didnt. It wont. With AI interpreting, there may be wisdom in not going at it too fast. Unless youre an interpreter, in which case youre probably moving too slowly.
[00:04:42] Look whos talking.
[00:04:44] To reconcile our fears and not get in the way of progress, we need to exercise an old and human privilege, talking as openly and transparently as we possibly can, exchanging notes on areas and compromises we can all get behind, and doing our best to determine ethical ways to push forward and away from the lines of fear and haste. Regardless of our stance, we should be talking. After all, the machines are.
[00:05:11] This article was written by you, Andro McCallan, a conference interpreter, former chief interpreter in the United nations system interpreter, trainer, and language technology advocate. He is a TEDx speaker and the author of three books, including the language game, originally published in multilingual magazine, issue 230, July 2024.
