The use of technology for interpreting and translation, machine translation online, remote interpreting, speech to text and vice versa, the use of artificial intelligence and generative synthetic systems is beneficial in a lot of circumstances and to a lot of people, privately and in business. It comes with a lot of advantages – it is fast, cheap, accessible, and easy.
But there are disadvantages too. In a digitally connected world, it's easy to forget about the people. What will be lost if we entrust the future to AI instead of to people?
What happens to the languages in the digital channels?
What happens to languages that are not digitized?
What happens to people who can’t access the digitized world?
What happens to empathy when we no longer communicate face to face?
What happens to body language, situated communication, interpreting of meaning?
What happens to threats to a sustainable profession and the paradigms for the profession?