I saw a news today. “Most recent AI (Artificial Intelligence) make simultaneous interpretation possible on Skype”

http://wired.jp/2014/12/20/skype-used-ai/

This is really amazing. As the world of Sci-Fi movie becoming a reality, I have mixed feeling with an excitement and bit of a fear. Well, but it seems like they try with English and Spanish which have some affinity in each other at first. But this kind of function still generate very unnatural translation when it comes to, for example, English and Japanese that have quite different structures. Maybe this will be cleared by AI one day soon?

How about what I have been wanting? I have been wanting Khmer and Japanese translation system. Will my dream come true while I’m still alive? Someone say that Khmer might disappear before it will be able to translated to any language…well, it might be so.

The foundation of this real time interpretation service is that the function to be able to listen language correctly. And such function is quite accurate already with IPhone’s Siri or “OK Google” of Android. For example, English version of Siri can distinct British english and Aussie English, American English. And if my American friend talks to British English version of Siri, she doesn’t understand any. She is nonsensically accurate. haha! Of course when I talk to Siri, she ignores me to the point that I feel I will never speak any English word ever in my life.

If it is real human conversation, such situation that American talks with British and not able to understand at all won’t happen. Even my English with strong accent, most people can hear and understand. By the way, I speak English with accent but my Japanese as well with accent from Kansai, it is like a southern accent of Japanese. I was living in Tokyo for 2 years before I come to Cambodia but I could not speak Kanto accent Japanese because I was embarrassed somehow. Speaking in Kanto accent (Regular Japanese) is higher wall for me than singing a song in soprano or something. However, very unfortunately I have to master Kanto accent for the computer interpreter to understand what I want to say.

So, it means that Kanto accent Japanese that I never were forced to speak, is now forced on me. And I have to do it for computer. What is this? Computer is getting closer to human or we are required to be close to computer? What do you think?

In near future, AI will take over humans and our world expect to be like Sci-fi movie. But it seems like we, humans, are doing a favor for computer already. Us, humans can live in Cambodia, where is my current residence with frequent power outage but computer server room must be air conditioned I guess. Even though, most of place on earth do not even have air conditioner.

Masayoshi Son of Soft Bank said that computer will catch up with our brain in 2018. Number of transistors in one computer chip will be 30 billion. It is the same amount with brain cells of human.  I think this will be real one day. At that time can we distinguish someone you are talking to is human or AI? Well, if I start pondering something like this, I can see our future will be just like Matrix movie. Can’t wait, can we?