A ‘Shocking’ Amount of the Web Is Already AI-Translated Trash, Scientists Determine

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 212 points –
A ‘Shocking’ Amount of the Web Is Already AI-Translated Trash, Scientists Determine
vice.com

A ‘Shocking’ Amount of the Web Is Already AI-Translated Trash, Scientists Determine::Researchers warn that most of the text we view online has been poorly translated into one or more languages—usually by a machine.

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Oh no, the AI trash is replacing the human made trash......

It's actually very annoying IMO, I see a lot of it, especially on Youtube. I try to block the channels that do it, but new ones keep popping up. Youtube frontpage could absolutely become completely useless.

The article says "already" like this is the result of something new and not the machine translation we've had for well over a decade.

As someone who has spent their life translating for family this isn't surprising. Nor is it any easier when they bring me poorly translated documents and hope I decipher machine diarrhea. The tech is still years behind being real world ready, especially with anything above 6th grade grammar and nuanced word choice that depends on context and sometimes dialect. But free is free so 🤷

But free is free so 🤷

The free ones suck but some of the paid ones are pretty good.

I was recently tasked with translating an auto-biography a 90 year old relative wrote, and the results were really good. I don't speak their language very well, and they don't speak mine very well either. I was quoted $10,000 by a professional human translation service.

OpenAI, for comparison, would charge about five bucks with their most expensive model. And the results are a lot better than a free translation. Is it better than a human? No - but it's pretty close.

But how do we KNOW this article wasn't written by AI to throw us off their trail. Hmmm...