If AI is so good, why are there still so many jobs for translators?

Summary

Planet Money: If AI Is So Good, Why Are There Still So Many Jobs for Translators?

Released on December 30, 2024 | Host: NPR's Planet Money

In the latest episode of Planet Money, the team delves into the intricate relationship between artificial intelligence (AI) advancements and the sustained demand for human translators. Titled "If AI Is So Good, Why Are There Still So Many Jobs for Translators?", the episode features an in-depth conversation with Luis Von Ahn, the CEO and co-founder of Duolingo, a leading language learning platform.

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Exploring AI's Impact on Translation Jobs

The episode kicks off with Greg Rosalski addressing a prevalent concern: the fear that AI advancements, particularly in language translation, might render human translators obsolete. He references common media narratives that predict the demise of translation jobs due to AI's rapid improvement.

“Will AI replace jobs or change jobs?” asks Rosalski (00:18), setting the stage for a nuanced exploration of the topic.

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Interview with Luis Von Ahn: The Mind Behind Duolingo

Luis Von Ahn brings a rich background to the conversation. Born in Guatemala, he moved to the United States to study mathematics and computer science. Von Ahn is renowned for co-creating CAPTCHA, the widely recognized test that distinguishes humans from bots on websites.

At 02:21, Von Ahn explains, “CAPTCHA is completely automated Public TURING test to tell computers and humans apart.” His pioneering work earned him a MacArthur Genius Grant in 2006, a testament to his innovative contributions to technology.

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Current State of AI in Translation

Von Ahn provides a realistic assessment of AI's capabilities in translation. He acknowledges the significant strides AI has made, especially with systems like Google Translate, but emphasizes that complete automation is still a work in progress.

“AI has been improving for about 10 years and keeps getting better, but I don't think translation will be perfect overnight,” Von Ahn states at 04:31. He highlights a synergistic model where AI handles the initial translation pass, followed by human refinement to ensure accuracy and contextual relevance.

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Duolingo’s Hybrid Approach: AI and Human Collaboration

Duolingo leverages AI to enhance its language learning tools, especially in conversation practice. Von Ahn elaborates on how AI enables more interactive and dynamic language exercises, a feature that was previously resource-intensive and time-consuming.

“At 13:48, Von Ahn explains, “Learning a language requires vocabulary, reading, and conversation. Large language models now allow us to teach conversation more effectively.”

This hybrid approach not only maintains job roles for translators but also enhances the learning experience by combining the efficiency of AI with the nuanced understanding of humans.

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Addressing Media Claims: Layoffs and AI Integration

The conversation takes a critical turn when Rosalski brings up recent media reports suggesting that Duolingo replaced human translators with AI, leading to significant layoffs. Von Ahn addresses these claims directly.

“At 08:46, Von Ahn clarifies, “There was exaggeration in the media. We did not lay off full-time employees. Instead, we chose not to renew contracts for some of our hundreds of contractors.”

He explains that automation allowed Duolingo to reduce the need for certain types of translation work, particularly routine tasks that were more susceptible to AI intervention. However, this did not translate to broad-scale layoffs, especially among core creative and strategic roles within the company.

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Future Prospects: AI’s Role in Enhancing Productivity

Looking ahead, Von Ahn is optimistic about AI's potential to revolutionize productivity. He shares examples of how AI has drastically reduced the time required for tasks that once took years, enabling rapid iterations and continuous improvement.

“At 11:26, Von Ahn remarks, “The productivity is like 10x. We're leaning into AI to do things that previously required 1,000 people for years, now achievable by 20 people in a few months.”

This leap in efficiency underscores AI's role not as a job destroyer but as a tool that can augment human capabilities, allowing for more creative and impactful work.

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Balancing Optimism with Caution

Despite his optimism, Von Ahn expresses a cautious outlook regarding AI's rapid advancements. He acknowledges the potential societal challenges, particularly the risk of abrupt transitions that could displace workers en masse.

“At 16:08, he shares, “I'm mostly optimistic, but I am anxious about how fast these changes are happening. A slower transition would be preferable to prevent large-scale job losses.”

Von Ahn emphasizes the importance of a balanced approach, advocating for gradual integration of AI technologies to allow society to adapt and mitigate adverse effects on employment.

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Conclusion: A Symbiotic Future for AI and Human Translators

The episode concludes with a reinforced message that AI and human translators need not be adversaries. Instead, their collaboration can foster advancements in language learning and translation services, enhancing both efficiency and quality.

Luis Von Ahn encapsulates this sentiment by highlighting the enduring need for human oversight and creativity in translation tasks, ensuring that AI serves as an empowering tool rather than a replacement.

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Notable Quotes:

• Greg Rosalski (00:18): “Will AI replace jobs or change jobs?”

• Luis Von Ahn (02:21): “CAPTCHA is completely automated Public TURING test to tell computers and humans apart.”

• Luis Von Ahn (04:31): “I don't think translation will be perfect overnight.”

• Luis Von Ahn (08:46): “There was exaggeration in the media. We did not lay off full-time employees.”

• Luis Von Ahn (11:26): “The productivity is like 10x.”

• Luis Von Ahn (16:08): “I'm mostly optimistic, but I am anxious about how fast these changes are happening.”

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This episode of Planet Money offers a balanced perspective on the evolving landscape of AI in translation, highlighting both the transformative benefits and the necessary precautions to ensure a harmonious integration of technology and human expertise.

Transcript

[Mary Childs]

This message comes from NPR sponsor Shopify, the global commerce platform that helps you sell and show up exactly the way you want to customize your online store to your style. Sign up for a $1 per month trial [e-mail] NPR hi, this is Mary Childs.

[Greg Rosalski]

There's the saying about artificial intelligence that right now AI is the worst it will ever be. It screws up a lot now, but it is only going to get better. So how to even answer questions like will AI replace jobs or change jobs? We talked about this on the show last year and especially in the Planet Money newsletter, which our beloved Greg Rosalski writes. Subscribe if you haven't already. It's very good. So today we are sharing something that Greg uncovered for the newsletter this summer. He figured out a clever way to investigate AI progress for jobs. Look at something AI is looking already good at. Translation Greg interviewed an AI innovator who also is the head of the language learning app Duolingo. We regularly publish Greg's newsletter chats as bonus episodes for our Planet Money plus subscribers. So if that is you, you already got a chance to hear this bonus content is just one perk of signing up for Planet Money Plus. You also get every episode of Planet Money without sponsor messages and you get exclusive plan Planet Money merch at the NPR shop. So while you listen today, consider supporting us by signing up. Just go to plus.npr.org okay, here's Greg.

Recently I've been trying to figure out how to measure if AI is overhyped right now or maybe it's appropriately hyped, I don't know. And one of the people I talk to about this is an entrepreneur and AI innovator.

[Luis Von Ahn]

My name is Luis Vonan and I am the CEO and co founder of Duolingo.

[Greg Rosalski]

Duolingo. It's the popular language learning app. Luis has a pretty fascinating background. He was born and raised in Guatemala, and he came to the United States for college to study mathematics and computer science. In his early 20s, Luis Co created Captcha. You're probably familiar with it when a website you know forces you to prove you're human and ask you to do things like identify stoplights or bicycles or whatever in a grid of photographs. I didn't know this until I spoke to him, but CAPTCHA is actually an.

[Luis Von Ahn]

Acronym, completely automated Public TURING test to tell computers and humans apart. It's a mouthful. It's basically a test to distinguish whether you're a human or a computer.

[Greg Rosalski]

Luis's work on Captcha is one reason why he was awarded a MacArthur genius grant back in 2006. At the time he was only 28. How do you, how do you stay humble after that?

[Luis Von Ahn]

I don't know. I don't know if I am humbled but. Well, that's honest, you know, I don't know about staying humble but I mean I. There's a lot left to do.

[Greg Rosalski]

Back when he first co created Captcha, Louis says the test was pretty simple. It was, you know, easier to trip up machines. At first all it took was identifying squiggly letters and numbers.

[Luis Von Ahn]

Nowadays computers are about as good as humans at reading the story characters, which is why CAPTCHAs have moved onto basically really blurry images of bicycles or whatever.

[Greg Rosalski]

Interestingly, Louis says these are images that are often taken by self driving cars. The computer guiding these cars sometimes has a hard time deciphering what these images are, which is why Captcha crowdsources help from humans. This data is in other words, kind of slowly making AI smarter. So yeah, Luis is a pretty interesting guy to talk to about AI not only because of his work on Captcha, but also because earlier this year there were a series of headlines suggesting that his company Duolingo laid off human workers and replaced them with AI. Okay, so here is today's bonus episode. My conversation with Luis Von Ahn. I want to start with jobs in language translation. So I've seen a lot of these popular listicles in the media that highlight the 10 most likely jobs to be like killed by AI. And basically on all of these lists are the jobs of translators interpreters. And yet the U.S. bureau of Labor Statistics projects that over the next decade the number of American translators interpreters will actually grow by 4%, which is about equal to the average growth of all occupations. And I also took a look at job sites and there are still tons of companies hiring translators interpreters right now. So what's up here? If AI is so good, why are translating jobs actually still growing?

[Luis Von Ahn]

Well, so okay, a couple of things. This is not new. Translation by computers between for example English and Spanish or English and German, like between the large languages has been really good. You know, starting with Google Translate about for about 10 years and it keeps getting better and better and better. And you know what I don't think is going to happen is one day suddenly translation was completely and then the next day is perfect and then all translators get fired. This is a gradual process which started out years and years ago. And today a lot of translation is already done by computers. I mean that's already happening now at the same Time. I think there's also more and more demand for translation because translation is a lot cheaper, a lot faster because computers are there, there's a lot more demand. So what you're seeing today, at least for translation in particular, is this combo, this hybrid between humans and computers. I mean, maybe the computer takes the first pass and then a human kind of fixes it up a little bit, etc. And over time is probably the case that computers will be as good as humans at language translation, maybe even better because they're faster. We're not quite there yet. It's still the case that computers make some mistakes. And I think, you know, companies are hiring humans or governments are hiring humans. When you want somebody to actually have like a real opinion because it may be, you know, maybe a life or death situation, for example, I don't think you want to fully rely on a computer. If you're a translator for the army or something like that, and you know, you're talking to like an enemy combatant, I don't think you want to fully do that yet. Or companies who just want to make sure that no mistakes are made. But even translators that are hired, most of them use computer translation as a first step. And I think you're going to see something like that.

[Greg Rosalski]

So does Duolingo employ translators and interpreters and if so, how many or about how many interpreters?

[Luis Von Ahn]

We don't because we don't do what you would see on the UN doing real time interpretation like that. But translators, we do not very many. We have been reducing that number for a while and at this point it's, I don't know, dozens. It's not a lot.

[Greg Rosalski]

And what do they do at your company?

[Luis Von Ahn]

Generally they're going over the things that computers have done. Most of the stuff we do with computers, yeah, Double checking, making sure. Now it depends on what.

[Greg Rosalski]

4.

[Luis Von Ahn]

By the way, I should say there are certain, you know, there's a difference in importance in text. For example, if it's our content, as in like our learning content, there's so much of that thousands and thousands and thousands of kind of sentences and words and paragraphs, that is mostly done by computers and we probably spot check it. But if it's things like the user interface of Duolingo where we say like, you know, the button says quit and we have to translate, that is all done with humans and we spend a lot of effort on that. But that's because each one of those is highly valuable. Like we cannot have a mistake in the quit button or in the button that says purchase now or whatever. We just cannot have a mistake. And not only it's not just about mistakes. We want to make sure the voice is consistent throughout the app, et cetera.

[Greg Rosalski]

So in other words, because AI can make mistakes because, you know, it's not perfect, you need humans. It's. It's worth the extra cost.

[Luis Von Ahn]

Yeah. For example, in our app, we have made the decision that in Spanish we use the informal second person pronoun. So when we refer to somebody in the app, we refer to the user informally. When we say you, we say the informal you. Like usted versus two is informal, usted is formal. We don't use usted, we use tu. The people that do our user interface in Spanish know that. I know that very well. If you were to just ask a computer to do it, it may, you know, may be inconsistent in different screens. It may be something. So we just want to make sure that it's all consistent, that it has the same voice, same playful voice, et cetera. And so for that we still employ humans.

[Greg Rosalski]

So earlier this year, there were a number of articles, actually quite a few, including in the Washington Post, they were published and they made really big deal out of the fact that Du Lingo laid off, I guess, some contractors who specialized in translation and replaced them with AI. So first off, what can you tell us about that episode? Did you lay off translators and replace them with AI?

[Luis Von Ahn]

Yeah, there a lot of exaggeration that happened there. I mean, there was all these articles that said we did major layoffs. This is not true.

[Greg Rosalski]

We did not lay off 10% of your workforce or something.

[Luis Von Ahn]

Yeah, no, this is just not true. We did not. First of all, no full time employees were affected here. We've had a contract of a few hundred contractors. And what happened at the end of last year is we did not renew the contract for some of them because we looked at, you know, the work that was going to be required over time and we just didn't need as many of them. It is true that one of the reasons we didn't need as many of them is because some of the stuff that they were doing we could now automate. But these were, you know, you got to understand this type of worker. I mean, these were not all of them, but a lot of them were people who were working a couple of hours a week from a very remote location. And you know, that type of work is probably a lot more susceptible for being substituted with AI than somebody who is kind of in the office every day, you know, doing more creative stuff or Anything like that. This was, you know, a lot of that was just kind of rote stuff.

[Greg Rosalski]

So I gotta ask, do you have any plans to lay off more contractors or employees and replace them with AI? And why or why not?

[Luis Von Ahn]

No plans, no plans for that. What, what is true is that we're, you know, we're going to as a company and I think most tech companies, we're leaning into AI quite a bit and we're going to continue doing that. And you know what we're seeing? I'll tell you, I'll give you a really good example of what we're seeing with AI. About five years ago, somebody pitched a feature idea to me which was basically in the app, some of the lessons. You were basically going to see a little like animated, kind of like a little two minute cartoon where you got to listen in the language that you were learning. It was a really cool feature. And then I asked how long is the data for this going to take to create? Because we need to make the data like basically all the episodes. They said five years. And I said, no, you're crazy, we're not going to make that feature. I don't want to spend five years on this. This is ridiculous. About a year ago that same person came back to me and basically said, hey, we can do that. But the data now takes like three months to make with AI. There's some human involvement, but it takes like three months to make with AI. And then I'm like, sure, just do it. And you know what's beautiful about it is not only can you do it in three months as opposed to five years, even if you mess up and you do it in three months and at the end you don't love the outcome, you can redo it and it'll only take three months. So you can do it and mess up and do it again and still do it way faster than five years. That's the type of stuff that you're seeing where things just by the way, we're still going to need the humans. We're just going to be able to do way more and way cheaper the things that we just couldn't do before.

[Greg Rosalski]

Supercharging productivity.

[Luis Von Ahn]

Yeah, the productivity is like 10x and that's more the direction we're going to go, where we're going to lean into AI quite a bit. But we're just going to be doing things that before were just prohibitive because they were going to require 1,000 people working for years, whereas now 20 people working for a few months can do what was required before. So I think on our end that's probably more what you're going to see. Foreign.

[Mary Childs]

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[Greg Rosalski]

When did Duolingo start using AI and how have you been using it?

[Luis Von Ahn]

Oh, since the beginning. I mean when, when we launched Duolingo, we knew that we wanted to have a computer that was going to teach you. So not we didn't want to have humans teach you. We wanted to have computer, we better computer. So from the beginning we were using AI. Now, of course, AI has gotten a completely different tone and definition in the last couple of years because of large language models. But AI has been around for, you know, the concept of AI has been around for whatever, 60 years, maybe longer than that.

[Greg Rosalski]

So when, when did you adopt large language models?

[Luis Von Ahn]

Well, large language models almost two years ago, less than, a little less than two years ago, we started playing with GPT4. We got early access to it and so we started playing with it. We, we officially launched the first features related to it last year.

[Greg Rosalski]

Is this an official partnership with OpenAI.

[Luis Von Ahn]

Or is it like we have an official partnership with OpenAI?

[Greg Rosalski]

It allows you to chat in real time on the, on the app or.

[Luis Von Ahn]

Yeah, conversation. That's the biggest thing. You know, learning a language requires a number of different aspects. You got to learn vocabulary, you got to learn how to read, you got to learn a bunch of stuff. We historically have been really good at teaching you all aspects of language except for one, which is conversation, and in particular the kind of multi turn, you know, think on your feet kind of conversation. We just couldn't do that with technology up until large language models, but now we can. And so that's what we're doing. We're we're basically really adding a lot of features to teach you how to converse a lot better.

[Greg Rosalski]

So a couple weeks ago, when OpenAI recently released GPT4O, they. They really highlighted to the world, like, how great it is at translation. It was really kind of front row and center of how they were selling this new version of it. And, you know, they showed a smartphone using GPT4O transiting a conversation between people in real time. Are you concerned at all that it will reduce the demand for duolingo? The fact that, like, these are getting.

[Luis Von Ahn]

So good, we are not seeing a decline in people wanting to learn a language with duolingo, even though this has been true. If you look at our users, we have two big chunks of users. One is actually Americans or British people who are doing so as a hobby. It's just a hobby. And when you ask them, like, why are you learning on duolingo? They're like, well, you know, I used to play Candy Crush and now at least I'm getting pretty good at Spanish. Those people are going to continue doing so because it's a hobby again. I mean, you know, people are doing chess as a hobby, even though computers have been better than humans at chess for the last 20 years. So that's kind of one big group of people. And the other big group of people is people learning English for a number of reasons. Not only is it for possible education opportunities or employment opportunities, but it's even. It's just even to get around. I mean, if you go to many other countries, this is true in many Latin American countries. A lot of stuff is just in English and like, ads are in English and stuff like that. And people just want to say, well, you know, music, yeah, music is in. That's. That's. So English is a unique language in that respect because it is the lingua franca, etc. People actually, honest to God, want to learn English and that's the other big chunk of our users. So, you know, historically, we just. We just have not been concerned about this.

[Greg Rosalski]

So, last question. Do you have worries about AI? Are you optimistic? Like, how would you characterize your feelings, your belief about AI?

[Luis Von Ahn]

I'm mostly optimistic. I'm mostly optimistic, but I am anxious. And I think the anxiety comes from the fact that it's just really hard to know what will happen and how fast it will happen. And in addition to that, I can see a place where maybe the end thing will be really good. Like, you know, imagine we have AI can do everything, et cetera, whatever you want. And the end thing is, well, we just, you know, we just have a life of leisure. Maybe that's the end thing. It's great. I worry that the transition may not be so good, especially if it's very fast, because it may be the case that a lot of people could lose their job, etc. I just don't know. My sense is that what we probably want is probably a slower transition rather than a faster transition.

[Greg Rosalski]

And it seems to be happening that way with translators, interpreters. No, you said like, right. This has been one of the frontiers of AI research and development, and it's.

[Luis Von Ahn]

Taken a long time. The good news is that even with things that are clearly obvious, societies take a while to change. Even, even with things that are like, we just all agree that this is the right thing to do. It just takes years. And so I think in general, if you give humanity, you know, a couple of decades of notice, I think we'll probably figure it out. But I do worry about a short transition because, you know, if a lot of people lose their job at the same time, particularly, you know, this is kind of this, all this research, large groups of unemployed young males leads to basically war. Like, you kind of don't want that. You know, as long as that doesn't happen, I think we'll be okay.

[Greg Rosalski]

All right. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me.

[Luis Von Ahn]

Thank you, Greg. Thank you.

[Greg Rosalski]

If you liked this, you can hear more of Greg's newsletter, interviews and other bonus episodes like the Planet Money Movie Club by signing up for Planet Money Plus. In these times of uncertain advertising revenue, subscriptions are the steadiest, best way to support our work and help keep us going again. Just go to plus.npr.org for details. We are very grateful. I'm Mary Childs. This is npr.

[Mary Childs]

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