"Universal Translator being designed." Topic

Out on the road I was listening to Radio 4 , and a programme presented by Rory Bremner about the human voice. Some things are being developed- voice regonition software that uses your voice like a finger print for security on the phone and A UNIVERSAL TRANSLATOR.

They didn't call it that, but thats what it is.

What they are developing is a machine that accepts spoken input, and translates it.

So Far so 20th century- just Dragon 'Naturally speaking' coupled with a translator program.

But here's the clever bit.

The voice synth analyses your voice patterns, and so when it speaks the translation IT SOUNDS LIKE YOU.

Pretty damn cool.

Could make for some interesting combinations – like Japanese spoken with a southern US accent

Konnichiwa, y'all.

Google have it sussed -- instead of the traditional methods of translation, they use comparisons of actual speech. That way you avoid all the ridiculous errors of direct translation.

I reckon in 20 years they'll have a genuine universal translator, that hardly ever makes a mistake.

10 years more for the spoken version -- that's a much harder thing.

That is pretty cool. Now they need something that will scan books and translate their contents as a sort of magnifying glass type thingy. You move it across the page and it takes the Polish writing and turns it into English. Or better yet moves across the page by itself and reads the English to you.

No one will ever need to learn another foreign language again!

Transliteration and translation are two entirely different things. That's how we get stuff like:

"Will go rotary in the air three times." (Claim on the package for a cheap styrofoam glider made in China.)

@Parzival … LOL!

My favorite of all time came from a toy. The toy was only marginal, but the packaging was so funny I bought it just for that. Anyway, they took:

"So fun you won't put it down!" and that became
"Will afix to the hand without loosening!"

Anyway, I love the idea of a universal translator, but I suspect they won't be real (useful) in my lifetime.

"Could make for some interesting combinations – like Japanese spoken with a southern US accent"

I was in a review at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in East Tennessee last week. A local Department of Energy employee looked Japanese and had a Japanese name, yet spoke with an Appalachian accent (ala "Beverly Hillbillies"). I found it somewhat jarring, kind of along the lines of having Sulu from the original Star Trek speak like Jed Clampett.

Anyway, I love the idea of a universal translator, but I suspect they won't be real (useful) in my lifetime.

At the moment we are communicating via a medium not even dreamt of when I was born (1964). Even science fiction didn't dream of something like personal computers in a phone and instant world-wide communication from anywhere to anywhere.

Think of 3D graphics nowadays. Spreadsheets. etc.

Translation is a software issue -- so it will be solved in my lifetime.

Now hardware is nowhere near as predictable -- so I'm not betting on fusion power, nor non-rocket spacecraft.

Gamertom, I worked for several years with a Korean woman with a serious backwoods North Carolina accent. She had moved to the US when she was a baby. Amused me no end :)

Half a yen of half yen rice.
Half a yen of black sticky substance.
Thats the way the yen seems to disappear.
Whoops another furry animal explodes.

Pop goes the weasel translated to Japenese and back.

Robert

Pictors Studio, close:

link

You all are just too young.

I remember Black and White TV's.

I remember a time before video games, 40 pound satellite phones, punch cards, paper tape for booting PDP-11's, crashed computer disks that made large clock faces, and 33 1/3 records.

I remember serial port daisy wheeled printers, massively expensive 300 baud Racal Vadic modems with a place to put the headset of a phone. In those days ALL TELEPHONES had a common design and were made by a single company. ALL TELEPHONES were rented from Ma Bell. No one owned their own phone.

I remember a time when PC's did not exist, except in the minds of sci fi authors. And then, they were huge, or took the form of big clunky robots. I remember bomb shelters, communism, the Berlin Wall, Timothy Leary, and slide rules. I bet none of you ever saw a slide rule! We used them before the invention of calculators. We did have adding machines however. They were the size of microwave ovens and had a handle on the side to make them work.

And there were no microwave ovens!

Yet, strangely, the fastest airplane ever flown, the SR-71, was invented in that age without computers, with only the slide rule and human intuition.

I remember B-52's sitting Nuclear Alert waiting for the order to annialate humanity. I was a Navigator/Bombadier on one of those B-52s, and sat Alert in an inderground bunker waiting for the klaxon. Watch "The Day After" for a vision of hell.

Most of you don't remember the evil empire, the Soviet Union.

And I would never have predicted cell phones, PC's, video games, GPS, cable TV, or iPods.

But, I see the error of my ways.

I see human like love robots, because of advances in asymetric 128 bit multicore optical CPU's. A lovebot will be perfect! Compatibility will be assured because personality, wants, desires, and appearence are fully programable and customizable. I predict that the hot topic of the day will be to allow marraige between man and machine.

I see translator chips directly implanted into the brain. I see chips the size of rice in cars, TV's, guns, children, and anything that can be stolen, and that will eliminate crime as we know it. I predict vacations and schooling and happy memories directly inserted into the mind. Vacations without the need for actual travel, time, or human contact. And you can replay your happy memories whenever you want! You can even link to your loved one (flesh or machine) for a shared experience.

And it will all happen in the next 20 years! Everything that I just mentioned IS BEING WORKED ON AS I TYPE THIS!

Speech based translators will be common place in 5 years.

I "fought" the cold-war too… But in a different way than sitting in a B-52 (I just was supposed to "Make-Friends" and then tell these two guys all about them when it was done… And take pictures… and look for "Strange" things going on in Trafalgar Square….

And… I learned Computers on a PDP-11 with the Paper tape and then 300 baud modem with the cradle handset…

I cannot comment on the phone thing… I do remember the extremely sturdy phones made by Ma-Bell (Designed to live through an EMP burst if I remember correctly)… But, was it a good thing to have the phone company be a monopoly??? Can't say…

Now, about Universal Translators…

At the Singularity Summit (First Year)… Ray did a demo of a phone that he had patented…

You speak one language into it, and another comes out the other side.

He had a prepared public demo, and a private demo that was not prepared (in French, German and Chinese)… It took a few seconds for the second language to begin speaking, but it was pretty accurate according to teh monitors of the demo…

You are correct though… in 5 years… translators will be common place. It makes me worry about why I am spending so much time learning Japanese and Chinese. I don't expect the digital translator to completely put the human translator out of a job for another 15 to 20 years (but that will happen), so I am not too worried in the mean-time.

There are other reasons to learn a language… A lot of AI work is language based, and neuro-linguistics are a big part of AI research.

And, you are correct, mike, about everything you just mentioned being worked on…. I am one of those doing so, and can give you the names of the "brains" behind the projects that are going on (I hope to be counted among them eventually). My Army of Robot-Supermen will make sure of it… (People get so scared when you mention armies of robotic supermen… But they too are going to be so commonplace that they will be about as scary as dogs, which can be scary, but are usually just things that chase the mailman, and occasionally drink out of the toilet).

I think really good translation is probably farther off than most people think. Language is ambiguous (for example the English verb To Cleave has two meanings which are the opposite of each other and can only be distinguished from the context.) Also we currently have two competing theories of how language works in the human brain. If we don't know how it works it will be difficult to make it work for a computer. A third problem is that many languages depend on accent and intonation.

Let's face it, people have been working on AI for 40 eyars and still haven't managed to make a little man in a computer game not walk in front of his friend's gun.

We've been working on real war for 10,000+ years. We still haven't managed to keep a real man in a real war not walk in front of his friend's gun.

Is friendly fire any more joyfull a thing than fire from a hostile stranger?

KK,

As ambiguous as language is, there are some very powerful tools now for doing "machine" translation….

A combination of the Neural & Genetic/Evolutionary Algorithms and the Rosetta stone methods and you have a very robust translator able to work in almost all civilian applications… They are using them now in Afghanistan in Iraq, for translation between civilians and US Military without an embedded translator, and they have been working marvels.

They are even in use by all the major phone companies, especially in Asia.

As for "AI".. The AI in your computer game is not even as powerful as the AI in your Email program… The reason: $$$, ¥¥¥, €€€, or £££ (depending upon where you are). Your email progam (assuming that it came from Apple or MS), even though it is probably won't sell as many overall packages as the computer games, had way more money put into its development…

And, there are reasons why they don't make the Computer game AIs smarter… Because they use the same engine to run the good and bad guys, and if they ad-guys operated as well as the good guys (with you behind the steering wheel) then there would be no way for you to beat the game…

Last… AI is so ubiquitous now that the world would come to a screeching halt if all of the AI systems were pulled. No telephone, no ATMs, No cell-phones, no Air-Traffic Control, no Stop-lights (Traffic Lights, pardon me), no supermarket checkout sales, no inventory control systems… The third world would suddenly find itself the first world..

AI is VERY, very powerful these days. It may not be able to do (well) things that are simple for a 3 year old… But that is ALL that is left to overcome for most AI. The rest:

They can fly planes, they can drive cars (in traffic), they can navigate ships (in traffic), they can predict the weather (better than we), they can solve complex mathematical proofs that are well beyond man, they can teach a robot to walk, they can recognize facial features (And expressions, but not well… yet), they can beat a human at chess (easily now), and on and on…

It seems that as soon as a computer can do something that a person can do… We stop calling it AI… I caught a very close friend just last Friday doing this exact thing (He was embarrassed, as he works with AI)…

Yes, we have been working on AI for the last 40 years… and… The really scary stuff that computers can do… most AI labs won't tell you about. There remain just a few things that computers cannot do, and they will likely fall within 5 years (This would be Marvin Minsky's program at MIT, and the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies at Stanford/Berkeley). The problem no longer lies in computers that are not powerful enough, nor in the abilities of software to model the requisite operations, but simply in sitting down and doing the hard work of putting them together…

And, when I say "Hard", I mean "Laborious" as the work is dirt simple when it comes down to the actual mechanics and engineering of the work necessary. All of the really hard work has been done during those last 40 years, when it seemed that "nothing" was happening.

The "Nothing" that was happening was a lot of small "somethings" that when put together… look remarkably like the lower animal brain of a human being…

Go have a look at the Blue Brain, at the Cortical Column Project, and work done by Omohondro, Geortzel (who is now selling AI agents on Second Life that will one day be as fully capable as you or I), Yudowsky, Thrun, and so on.. I am kicking myself as I cannot remember the name of the Spanish Guy who is working on a Brain project as well… His is one of those "Scary" projects…

Anyway… Don't dismiss AI just because your video game cannot (and in some cases is not allowed) use the must very advanced of AI systems or algorthms… If it could… You would go hide under your covers and shudder that the human race was on its last legs (my hope is that it is – only I probably mean that in a way that most will not understand).

Q:"Please fondle my buttocks?"
A:"Ah yes, it's three blocks down, take a right at the light".