
Machines, Lost in Translation: The Dream of Universal Understanding - evo_9
http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/12/24/460743241/machines-lost-in-translation-the-dream-of-universal-understanding
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jrgoj
It seems to me that we're still waiting on a breakthrough. FTA:

> "There's no saying where machine translation can go when the electronic
> brain meets the human one."

The neural networks that we modeled after our brains have recently become much
faster, and subject to much more input (training data) thanks to our
information age, but has the network fundamentally changed?

I foresee something of a plateau with the current model. Yes, in recent
decades we've seen exponential increases in MT accuracy and speed, but it's
still missing so much in terms of contextual relevance, and tiny
errors/hesitations in human thinking/speaking.

Yes, we can improve the algorithms and input processing speed, but are we
really on the brink of a breakthrough of something better? I think that
remains to be seen.

