TTE ...

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Pop Sci has come up with an unusual take on Verner Vinge's concept of the Singularity whereby the acceleration of tech, particularly regarding AI, becomes so rapid, the notion of predicting how the future evolves becomes impossible, something not seriously considered to happen, if ever, for another 25+ years, a notion which no longer applies given how quickly AI is changing all disciplines requiring thought with specific emphasis given to the inherent difficulties of language translation, a skill exclusively reserved for humans, until now.

In the world of artificial intelligence, the idea of “singularity” looms large. This slippery concept describes the moment AI exceeds beyond human control and rapidly transforms society. The tricky thing about AI singularity (and why it borrows terminology from black hole physics) is that it’s enormously difficult to predict where it begins and nearly impossible to know what’s beyond this technological “event horizon.”

Many AI researchers believe that solving the language translation problem is the closest thing to producing Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). This is because natural language is by far the most complex problem we have in AI. It requires accurate modeling of reality in order to work, more so than any other narrow AI. Thus, the evidence that Translated has provided regarding the closing of the gap between what expert human translators and an optimized machine translation (MT) system can produce is quite possibly the most compelling evidence of success at scale seen in both the MT and AI communities.

When plotted graphically, the TTE data shows a surprisingly linear trend. If this trend in TTE continues its decline at the same rate as it has since 2014, TTE is projected to decrease to one second within the next several years, approaching a point where MT would provide what could be called “a perfect translation.” This is the point of singularity at which the time top professionals spend checking a translation produced by the MT is not different from the time spent checking a translation produced by their colleagues which doesn't require any editing. The exact date of when this point will be reached may vary, but the trend is clear.

It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when ...