Small-talk capable AI?

I never thought of AI doing small talk until I took part in a breakout session during the DJW (Japanese-German Business Association Symposium) 2021 last week.

💬 The session deals with the use of AI-based chatbots in customer service and contact centres. In the presentation by Mario Wittke (eprimo GmbH), I learnt that #language is a big issue here.
He listed the following linguistic considerations as a starting point in designing chatbots.

✒Writing style
· Formal or informal
· Funny or focused
· (Possibly) small talk

📱 In a nutshell, the story is that users want to be clearly told that they are dealing with a #chatbot and not a human. This point was also confirmed by a co-speaker, Tomohiro Ishii (CEO, Mobilus Corporation). I think that this preference on the side of users automatically dictates the above issues on style.

💣 In a similar conference on #AI , we, #translators , are often referred to as a sort of endangered species.

💡 But I find a ray of hope in the above-described consumer behaviour. We should go for those areas where human touches are specifically asked for - advertising, marketing, expert opinions just to name a few.

❕ Another interesting point I’ve learned is that AI-assisted communication proliferates on its own. Through the introduction of chatbots, the entire communication volume is said to have increased.

⤵ I often hear lamenting voices from my colleagues that AI is taking away their jobs which may be true in some applications. But more likely, AI is generating new jobs. With the help of AI, people are translating things they never thought of translating before.

📱+📞
In the same session, Mr Ishii also expressed the importance of mixing channels, AI-based and human hotlines. The same can be said for translation. Once, I had a client who translated a government white paper stretching over several hundred pages using machine translation (#MT) beforehand. Just to know which chapters may be of interest to him – very clever. He then came back to me for having the selected chapters translated accurately with all implications properly interpreted.

✔No translator is up to the job of zipping through a coffee-table size white paper like AI does. We #human translators should be happy for being spared such tedious jobs and saved for those jobs that people expect humans to do.