Event: LT-Bridge Invited Talk: Large Language Models and Translation
Date: 18 May 2023
Time: 10:00 - 11:00
Venue: ICT Building, Level 0, Block B, Room 7 (ICT Computing Lab 1)
LT-Bridge Invited Talk:
Large Language Models and Translation - Should Machine Translation Developers and human translators be worried?
Abstract
With the paradigm shift to neural machine translation, we have seen a huge improvement in quality. However, this has led to a level of overhyping of MT capability, which has led some commentators to invoke ‘the singularity’ and claim that human translators are doomed as their jobs will be taken over completely by machines. While performance gains using AI techniques are impressive, they do not merit claims from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg who recently stated that “the ability to communicate with anyone in any language: that’s a superpower people have dreamed of forever, and AI is going to deliver that within our lifetimes”. Whenever there is a paradigm shift, performance gains are seen quite quickly, but level off reasonably soon thereafter. Based on 35 years of building MT systems of different types, this talk attempts to apply some perspective as to what the future holds, especially for human translators, who I contend will continue to play a critical role if further performance gains are to be seen, and MT is to be more widely adopted.
About Prof Way
Prof. Andy Way is a renowned academic and machine translation (MT) expert with a long-standing career at Dublin City University (DCU). His contributions to the field of MT have earned him notable recognition, including the 2015 DCU President’s Research Award for Science and Engineering and the 2019 Award of Honour from the International Association for Machine Translation.
Over his career, he has secured over €96.7 million in grants, led 13 EU projects, and spearheaded several significant initiatives. He has published over 400 peer-reviewed papers, with an h-index of 48 and almost 9,000 citations. He has mentored numerous successful students, and his team at DCU has won several international MT competitions.
This talk is organised by LT-Bridge - an H2020 Twinning Project in AI and Language Technologies. For more information or to register your participation, please contact Enrico Aquilina by sending an email.