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from the google-is-so-smart-it-can-maek-typos-for-us dept.
The NY Times covers in a very in-depth article Google's contribution to the recent revolution in deep learning through its application in Google Translation. A great read that covers the journey from new theories to practice in less than 10 years. This piece is surprising very technical as it tries to explains the history, the people and the technology behind the recent AI revolution. Take the time to read the full story here.
It is, in fact, three overlapping stories that converge in Google Translate's successful metamorphosis to A.I. — a technical story, an institutional story and a story about the evolution of ideas. The technical story is about one team on one product at one company, and the process by which they refined, tested and introduced a brand-new version of an old product in only about a quarter of the time anyone, themselves included, might reasonably have expected. The institutional story is about the employees of a small but influential artificial-intelligence group within that company, and the process by which their intuitive faith in some old, unproven and broadly unpalatable notions about computing upended every other company within a large radius. The story of ideas is about the cognitive scientists, psychologists and wayward engineers who long toiled in obscurity, and the process by which their ostensibly irrational convictions ultimately inspired a paradigm shift in our understanding not only of technology but also, in theory, of consciousness itself.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 18 2016, @03:19AM
That's a misconception about language - especially when it comes to poetic writing, but to some degree with all. When it is translated, inevitably, at best, a subset of possible interpretations is captured by the new language. Translating that subset back to the original language means you are getting a subset of all possible interpretations of something in an entirely different language. This new subset is intersected with the original intended meaning, but generally very different and incompatible.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday December 18 2016, @08:07PM
For really short phrases out of context, that's true. Otherwise...not. You don't get the actual connotations included in the original message, but you get the same basic meanings. This isn't invariably true, of course. I can't imagine a translation of Finnegan's Wake (James Joyce) even into Dutch, German, or Irish, much less into any other language. In fact there are parts that need translation into US American, and other parts that need translation FROM US American into British.
But the fact that edge cases exist doesn't mean that the basic process is invalid. To give an old classic example, the translation of "out of sight, out of mind" into "invisible idiot" or "distant mad man" is quite reasonable if you don't have context or know the idioms. But those things are part of a good modern translation program. One of the problems is that there are so many idioms. Another, of course, is that frequently context requires a good model of physics and another good model of emotional interactions. And "good" isn't a well-defined term in either of those cases.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.