>No, we just didn't read foreign language websites
I don't understand. You're just denying that, before machine translation worked well, some people translated their websites into more than one language? Not many, but some did.
The complaint is that automatic translation hasn't just added translations for those who couldn't afford knowledgeable people, but replaced some of the good translations with bad ones, at the same time driving people out of that kind of work.
I guess it seems at least superficially plausible to me because of the devastation wreaked on journalism by ad-tech.
Maybe the economic net benefit correlates to a societal net benefit, but that doesn't mean everybody has to be happy about the losses.
> I don't understand. You're just denying that, before machine translation worked well, some people translated their websites into more than one language? Not many, but some did.
No, I'm not. If the website was in a foreign language, I couldn't read it. If it had been translated, it was no longer only a foreign language website.
> Maybe the economic net benefit correlates to a societal net benefit, but that doesn't mean everybody has to be happy about the losses.
The reason this confuses me is that it seems extremely obvious that there is a massive net benefit. I can actually read foreign news from even the smallest website which never had the resources to translate. I can read foreign forums and subreddits discussing local politics - there's no universe in which anyone would've hired anyone to translate forum posts...
It's just patently ridiculous that machine translation might NOT be a net benefit.
It's just patently ridiculous that machine translation might NOT be a net benefit.
Ok. Let's assume that you're right, and apply the same logic to AI writing code:
Everyone gets free access to an AI that can write buggy-but-kind-of-working code for an app they can describe in plain English. If someone wants a basic app, for any reason, they just have to go through a series of prompts and they get something deployable out the other side. This democratizes coding, it enables and empowers millions of people, and it means anyone who wants an app of any sort can have it basically for free. Yay!
The downside is that the development industry shrinks by 90%.
That could be a net benefit for society, and I have no doubt people who want an app right now but can't afford to pay devs would absolutely think it is. I don't think you can assume cheaper access to worse products is necessarily a good thing though. There are downsides, like the consolidation of service provision into the hands of a few companies. For example, if you want translation today and you don't have a ton of money you're pretty much stuck with what Google will give you, with all of Google's biases.
I don't understand. You're just denying that, before machine translation worked well, some people translated their websites into more than one language? Not many, but some did.
The complaint is that automatic translation hasn't just added translations for those who couldn't afford knowledgeable people, but replaced some of the good translations with bad ones, at the same time driving people out of that kind of work.
I guess it seems at least superficially plausible to me because of the devastation wreaked on journalism by ad-tech.
Maybe the economic net benefit correlates to a societal net benefit, but that doesn't mean everybody has to be happy about the losses.