Kurzweil: Human-Level Machine Translation By 2029 186
An anonymous reader writes "In a video interview with the Huffington Post, noted futurist Ray Kurzweil predicts that machines will reach human levels of translation quality by the year 2029. However, he was quick to highlight that even major technological advances in translation do not replace the need for language learning. 'Even the best translators can't fully translate literature,' he pointed out. 'Some things just can't be expressed in another language.'"
Ray Kurzweil's predictions (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, I'm a big sucker for futurism as anybody, but Ray Kurzweil makes a lot of predictions about future tech every couple of years, most of which never pan out anywhere near what he predicted. And each time Kurzweil makes a prediction, many of which are just way too optimistic or just play goofy in retrospect, the tech-minded people like slashdot lap it up.
Can't tech futurists find a better spokesman than Ray Kurzweil?
Re:I predict... (Score:4, Insightful)
> We'll be doing full translations a lot sooner [than 2029].
Then we'll have it by 2029, won't we? Which is what he said.
Ray Kurzweil is full of shit (Score:3, Insightful)
This guy has been wrong on his previous predictions as everyone already has been emphasizing, but what the fuck is the deal with such a specific year for his prediction? Why not round up to indicate it's a rough measure? 2029, really??
Re:Ray Kurzweil's predictions (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, but for years, machine translation was stuck on alta vista's dreary babelfish... which was basically a one to one dictionary translation (often without using the right definition) for hilariously bad translations.
A couple of years ago, Google translate gave a big bump to the whole concept using UN documents (which are usually in 5+ languagels) as a reliable translation. It has a lot of hiccups, but translations often went from unreadable babble babel to something that often ranged from a decent translation to something you can figure out if you put some thought into it.
I have done a lot of work with translators and even they get things wrong, so I think Kurzweil is actually off in a way. IMO, by the end of this decade, machine translation will often be good enough (really, google translate needs to start looking for more context cues and I can't think that will be 19 years away) but there will never be perfection because language itself isn't perfect. Look at humans communicating sometime, it's not a strict protocol, can misunderstandings happen all the time between people. But when a machine gets it wrong, people will point to it as bad, instead of the nature of language itself.
Re:Ray Kurzweil is full of shit (Score:5, Insightful)
Just like the Rapture dude, having a specific date makes it more credible. Kurzweil is nothing if not a master manipulator of credibility...
Re:I dug through all the replies (Score:5, Insightful)
This is nothing other than the usual Kurzweil white-knighting. Going down the list:
1: The author defends the "computers in jewelry and clothing" prediction by pointing to smart phones, health monitors, and hearing aids. The latter two are not reasonably computers (and they existed in only marginally less advanced forms in 1998 already). Smart phones seem like a good defense here, but there is a fundamental problem. We can either say that smart phones are not clothing/jewelry (and therefore ineligible as defense of the prediction), or we can accept that they are -- but then why do the PDAs of 1998 not similarly qualify? The author is unable to produce a single example defending this that was not in some sense extant in 1998. Either the prediction has not been defended (because phones/PDAs are not clothing/jewelry), or it has been defended but is meaningless (because PDAs already existed in 1998 when the prediction was made).
2: The author doesn't even attempt to defend the actual ridiculous part of the claim -- that speech-to-text would account for the majority of text created.
3: The technology to project an image onto the eyes existed in 1998. Kurzweil once again managed the incredible feat of predicting the existence of something which already existed.
4: I don't know enough about chip fabrication to confirm or deny the author's argument. I'll accept it as probably true and say that this is one he got right.
5: Kurzweil predicted telephones capable of translation, and the author supports it by pointing to translation apps for smart phones. To anyone in 1998, the prediction meant a phone that could translate speech to another language -- that was the context in which phones were understood to function. They still do not do this (unless there are some new apps I'm unaware of). You could argue that Kurzweil is technically correct here, but I would say that (a) he is correct not through any foresight or wisdom, but because a wildly different application than what Kurzweil imagined came about and (b) that what we have is only an incremental update on the technologies of 1998 (eg electronic dictionaries) rather than the transformative capabilities Kurzweil predicted.
6: Kurzweil predicted drones would dominate combat, they don't. Author conveniently ignores this.
7: No need for me to comment, since even the author can't muster a defense for this embarrassment.
In short, what we see here is nothing different than what we normally see from Kurzweil-defenders (and Dead Sea Scrolls-defenders, and Psychic Hotline-defenders, &c). Six of the seven predictions are only accurate if you reinterpret the predictions to match reality (or worse, reinterpret reality to match the predictions), which frequently involves either neutering the interesting aspect of the prediction or making the prediction so vague as to be meaningless.
Kurzweil's ridiculous futurism is nothing but a religion for people who not uncommonly pat themselves on the back for being "too rational for religion."