[GALA Valencia 2024] - Ethics of AI in the Translation Industry - Aren’t We the Most Impacted Field?
The application of AI in global content transformation raises as many ethical concerns as it does for other industries. These concerns are the impact of the accuracy of translated or generated content, the governmental regulations around protecting the translation industry jobs, the workers’ and end users’ emotional safety, and DEI as it applies to the AI model development teams, and the omnipresent issue of data protection and security.
The language industry may be impacted most by the advancements in AI, as all concepts, ideas, and social phenomena are manifested via human language. A biased recommendation by a personalization engine will potentially be much less harmful, than an inaccurate statement produced by a language model. The biggest misconception is that AI is perfect in its current state, fully mimicking human reasoning. This leads to many AI adopters deploying AI without doing extensive research and vigorous testing.
When it comes to the Ethics of AI, there is a fine balance between blocking innovation and protecting society. Guardrails around producing potentially dangerous content, end-users emotional safety, and governance around data transfer rules are necessary and easy to implement, while the impact of AI on actual people’s jobs is less controllable, as progress inevitably leads to dramatic changes in the job types and job markets. Another area of focus is the potential impact of AI on promoting gender, racial, sex, age, and other biases which will be harmful to the public's emotional health.
LLMs are built on massive training corpora of human language and other human-produced content, and it is essential that model creation algorithms have mechanisms to mitigate the inherent biases of the training datasets. It is also a social responsibility to collect or generate training datasets for cultures other than English-centric, so that these models have sufficient local language vocabulary, accurately reflect anthropological phenomena, and produce inclusive content that caters to diverse global audiences.
This presentation will focus on various aspects of Ethical AI as it applies to the translation industry, ways of mitigating potential negative impacts, and best practices in safe and responsible development and deployment of AI-based applications.
Host organization: Globalization and Localization Association
Event Speakers
Olga Beregovaya
Smartling
Olga Beregovaya has over 25 years' experience in localization and language technology, with a particular focus on machine translation/other NLP applications development and deployment. She is currently driving the AI and strategy for Smartling. Olga is very active in the translation/localization industry; she is a frequent presenter at Localization World, AMTA, TAUS and GALA conferences. Olga is a former President of AMTA and a current Vice President and Technology Track sponsor of Women in Localization.
Jose Palomares
Coupa Software
Jose is the Director of Localization at Coupa, the software company leader in the enterprise Business Spend Management category. With a trajectory in our industry spanning more than 25 years as a translator, technologist, business leader, and entrepreneur, Jose brings to the table his combined experience from the vendor and buyer sides, a keen interest in all things technology, and an outspoken attitude toward how to empower our community, do more, and do better.
Manuel Herranz
Pangeanic
MIT in Entrepreneurship, Manuel worked for major automobile manufacturers and power co-generation in the UK in the 90’s with postings in Argentina, Mexico and his native Spain. His background in machine translation comes from his mission to automate language processes for B.I Corp., the Japanese corporation for which he was European Director from 1998-2005. He has traveled to Japan and China extensively. Since 2009, he has focused on the development of Natural Language Processing technologies to provide process automation and true value to clients. A frequent speaker at industry events, Manuel’s areas of interest cover statistics, deep neural networks, adaptive technologies, pattern recognition and deep learning applied to Natural Language Processing. His interest in data acquisition led him to make of Pangeanic a founding member of TAUS and data-sharing initiatives. Manuel is also committed to supporting NGO actions like the Malima Project for primary education in Central Africa, as well as Translators Without Borders, medical research into rare diseases and sports events. Manuel is a double graduate from Manchester University.
Mrinalini Kochupillai
Prof. Mrinalini Kochupillai (Nalini) is a guest professor and core scientist at the Technical University of Munich, leading the ethics group in the Future Lab: AI for Earth Observation. Before joining the Future Lab, Nalini has been a senior research fellow with the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition (2014-2018), and with the Chair for Business Ethics at the Technical University of Munich (2018-2019). She has also been a Program Director (2014-2017) and lecturer (2013-2022) at the Munich Intellectual Property Law Center (MIPLC), and an adjunct faculty at the EU Business School (2013-2014; 2018) and the Franklin Pierce Law Center (FPLC) (2007-2008). She has over 15 years of experience in teaching and research in the field of business law, intellectual property (patent) law, plant variety protection, sustainable innovations (in agriculture) and business ethics. Her more recent multi-disciplinary research has focussed on legal and ethical issues/opportunities in emerging technologies such as blockchain and AI. In 2023, Nalini was awarded the European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant for her project "Blockchain for Biodiversity" (ReSeed) which builds on her 12-year multi-disciplinary research on means of promoting conservation and sustainable innovations with agricultural biodiversity. Previously, she has also worked on this topic as Co-PI and lead author with the University of Leeds and Art of Living Foundation (Project titled "IP and Global Development" funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council). Other interests: An active blogger and entrepreneur, in 2019, Nalini conceptualized a blockchain-based start-up and brought together an international team to take the concept forward. Passionate about promoting mental health and well-being, particularly in University environments, in her free time, she teaches mindfulness, yoga, workplace wellness, and stress management seminars as a volunteer for SKY Campus EU & the UN-accredited International Art of Living Foundation.