"The goal of the GALE (Global Autonomous Language Exploitation) program is to develop and apply computer software technologies to absorb, analyze and interpret huge volumes of speech and text in multiple languages, eliminating the need for linguists and analysts and automatically providing relevant, distilled actionable information to military command and personnel in a timely fashion. Automatic processing "engines" will convert and distill the data, delivering pertinent, consolidated information in easy-to-understand forms to military personnel and monolingual English-speaking analysts in response to direct or implicit requests."
This description of the GALE program is taken directly from the DARPA website (DARPA is a research program funded by the Department of Defense). What worries me just a smidgen is the bolded part. So essentially, we're working to eliminate our relevance in the workplace is what they're saying, which sounds like a bad thing doesn't it? But after a moment's thought, I realized that machine translation research is only one of many fields in which the work is, as I called it "self-destructive". Research scientists in disease prevention, alternative energy sources, anything technology-related- all these can be self-destructive in some way. But I'm not that worried, because most of the time, a solution to one problem only generates more problems (more work for us!), like infinite recursion, and also, it will be way beyond my lifetime before a solution is even found. Although, judging by this really interesting article on machine translation, it may be sooner rather than later in this particular field. (Okay, looks like the article "Me Translate Pretty One Day" won't be posted on line until December 1st.) Here is a text version of the accompanying picture:
"Dos burritos, por favor"
Human translator: 2 burritos, please!
Machine translator: 2 young donkeys, please!
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2 comments:
Love it-- Angie, this blog was written in an eerily similar tone as the way my brother writes and thinks. I actually checked midway through your discussion to make sure I hadn't unconsciously moved on to Dave's....
I actually took a class on IT and the US labor market (ah, using Econ to get out of humanity requirements...).
It is interesting because the goal of technology is often to reduce the number of humans required to do a job which seems contradictory since by the rules of capitalism people need jobs to have money. But if you look at what actually happens it is different every time. Some technologies really do reduce the number of jobs. Some create new problems to be solved. Some make a task so easy or cheap that it leads to whole new fields which require workers (I used to work for an automatic test equipment company whose original goal was to replace people doing chip testing, the speed of automatic test equipment is one of the reason that microchips are so cheap so the company has clearly created far more jobs than it eliminated). Some technologies cause a company to high more skilled workers and sometimes it goes the other way. One example we studied was a bank where in one department people became more specialized due to technology and in another department individuals were given broader assignments because of technology.
In my opinion society should try to restructure itself such that if one person benefits from another losing their job that benefit should be shared. It would be good for the people losing their job since they would get something for losing their job and the other party would benefit because people (and the government) would be more open to outsourcing and technology replacing certain types of jobs. Also it seems to me that if we hit a point where we don't really need everyone to work, it seems silly to have a society where that is a bad thing. I'm not sure how to do this and I know it sounds a bit like communism. But one idea towards this goal is outsourcing/technology replacement insurance.
I also think that previous generations are not as used to the idea of switching companies so they are less flexible, but our generation will be more aware that they have to be more flexible and ready to switch jobs.
Hmm, that was a longer comment than I intended...
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