A.I. as a Thinking Tool

I have become more amenable to the reasons why A.I. should exist.

The reasons why are as follows.

In this blog post I will try to convince readers that A.I. is helpful to humanity. Indeed, I have called out A.I. in the past. And, perhaps I will continue calling it out in certain aspects. But I find that A.I. is indeed quite helpful to humanity.

Indeed it has been said by many that A.I. poses an “existential threat.” But I will dismiss that outright. I don’t think it does. People should be more concerned with how they can use A.I. to their benefit than how A.I. poses an existential threat, in my opinion. A.I. can help people become more productive, for example.

And no, no company is paying me to say all this positive stuff about A.I. I have come to realize it myself.

Even deeper and more profoundly, I have found a very compelling reason to use A.I. I mean generative A.I. This compelling reason has to do with a book I read a few years ago about the power of asking questions. I think just this about A.I. – you can ask it literally anything you want. This of course is governed by the policies these generative A.I. companies have laid out, of course. You’re not going to ask A.I. what someone’s social security number is and expect that it is going to tell you that.

What I have found about A.I. however, more profoundly still, is that it can assist human beings in thinking more clearly. This is all deep stuff, but I find that if I ask A.I. something, and perhaps it will give me a general answer, but I will think more deeply about that subject. This is how A.I. is shaping my life during these days.

I hope to find better solutions for business problems, in other words, for my translation business, among other answers from A.I. Or better said, I hope to utilize A.I. in the future and now to generate better responses to humanistic problems. This is a radical shift from what I used to think about A.I. But I realized I was being quite cynical about it. I was a grumpy guy. But anyway, I have come to realize and learn that A.I. can be quite useful, especially in the ways I have mentioned, and I am sure it is useful to many other people in a myriad of ways.

The most intriguing thing about A.I. in my opinion is that it can literally help engineer your thinking around a certain subject. Okay, maybe that sounds too profound for now: I get it. It sounds out of this world. But A.I., if understood in the right, moral, correct way, can truly help people (mostly individuals), to think in clearer, more profound ways. And here’s how I’m going to get to the more philosophically juicy part of this entry: you can literally ask A.I. a question every day, and you will become smarter. How? Because A.I. will give you a different answer. And this simple act of prompting the A.I., this simple action, will make you think about things in a different way. I am not even talking about the A.I. “giving” you or “transmitting” information to you. That I think is hogwash. However, if you are to really think about it, and philosophically consider the implications of asking an artificial intelligence module what you are questioning most, it will most likely help you in your thought process. I have yet to prove this. It is just a thought that has been running around my head that I’d love to capture. And I think I’ve done just that in my post.

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Law of Metaphysics

There was a professor I had in college who said you should write your introduction last, a piece of advice which always puzzled me. I wonder if he was onto something though. This is because sometimes we are so hasty to introduce ourselves that we forget the rest.

I am not trying to introduce some metaphysical principle of the fact that we miss time by writing (or living) introductory parts while we don’t get into the so-called meat of things. (Or that might be just what I’m trying to say.)

Here’s an example, and read it as a question: why do people say, “Hey, I’m Joseph, and I studied aeronautical engineering,” rather than saying outright: “Hey, I’m Joseph, and I am an astronaut.”

Perhaps the example strikes as extreme, but it is a paradigmatic shift in my view. I think it increases self-accountability, but let’s leave the theory for later.

That is, if it’s Joseph’s dream to be an astronaut, why would he not introduce himself as an astronaut? Or if he has even already completed many prerequisites for being an astronaut, why not introduce himself as one? Why not introduce ourselves as our dream professions? Why not introduce ourselves as what we want to be, rather than what we think we are?

You see, there’s a phenomenon out there called “minimization.” I won’t get into the psychology of it too much, but I think what it means to me is that we minimize what we are or want to be. For example, instead of calling myself, “translator, philosopher, writer, musician, and reader extraordinaire,” I could say, “Hey, I am into writing,” and leave it at that. (I forgot that I’m a poet, too, in the first.) But you get my point, correct? One introduction is far more forceful than the other. You could even say it has more energy than the other in a metaphysical or physical sense. I don’t write much about physics, but there are certain laws of the universe that go something like, “An object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an opposing force,” and if you’re a physicist, please refrain from correcting me, as I don’t have the proper impersonal status of the “Laws of Physics,” but please spare me if you notice something incorrect in my statement of said “Law of Physics.” What I really intend with my statement of the laws of physics is that the fact that I am all of those things tends to keep me in motion toward those goals. If I state that I am an “aspiring writer,” then all I will do is “aspire,” which is not necessarily my goal. So, there you go, a theory of motivation.

So I guess take that with the knowledge that I don’t intend to cause a theory of motivation into the world, all I do is observe, and generate interesting patterns about important matters to me. If this matters to you, then, so be it.

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What is a Noumenon?

I will not bore you with the dictionary definition of “noumenon,” although I’m not even sure it exists in too many dictionaries. That is to say, it probably is not in the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary. It may be in their Unabridged Dictionary. However, that is beside the point.

The point is that I’d like to discuss what a noumenon is and what it isn’t. I guess it’s a tricky thing to talk about because noumenon literally means that which we cannot know. It’s sort of like the opposite of the word “phenomenon.” Other than the fact that the etymology of “phenomeonon” is Greek, I don’t know much about the word’s history. I know that Immanuel Kant used it in his famous Critique of Pure Reason.

I also know that Jean-Paul Sartre used a similar, but not exactly the same, concept in his Being and Nothingness.

Noumenon, then, is something that we have no knowledge of, yet it is still going on out there in the world, but it is unknowable. I thought it’s kind of a cool concept to speak of, yet it’s almost as if we cannot even begin to describe it, because we don’t know what it is. It’s out of our league, if you know what I mean, phenomenologically.

Is a guitar a noumenon then? No, because we know what a guitar is and what it does.

I think what Kant and other authors were talking about when they described concepts or other things as noumena, was that those things were unknowable or unconceivable by human minds. So, things like pure reason itself, by Kant’s account, were noumena.

And so on and so forth.

Yet the reason I wanted to talk about noumena again is because I think in translation a similar process is going on in the “black box” explanation of translators’ minds.

Because we don’t quite know the cognitive processes going on in translators’ minds while they translate, we can say the cognitive process of translation is a sort of “noumenon.”

I have written on this subject before, and what Friedrich Schleiermacher alluded to as a “tertium comparationis” is sort of what goes on in translation, in that there’s a third element going on in between two languages in translation.

So can we say that the tertium comparationis is essentially a noumenon? Potentially. And because the tertium comparationis is a sort of “meta-language,” I’d say it is apt to describe it as a noumenon because we cannot really know what is going on in a translator’s mind in this case. Obviously the translator has a certain cognitive process occurring. However, we cannot generalize about this process in all translators. Otherwise, we might run the risk of calling translation a science, which it seems not to be, at least in my opinion (perhaps I’ll write another post on that line of thinking).

So, there is some more credibility for the “black box” explanation of translation in translators’ minds as a cognitive process. I don’t think it’s necessarily true – i.e. the “black box explanation” – yet what it reveals is interesting because it posits that what is inside the translator’s mind while he/she translates is unknowable. This, I think, is false. Yet, my point is that we cannot generalize about any of these things, and doing so would run the risk of trying to generalize among all translators, which I think a quite hefty (and quite impossible), task, indeed.

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AI [A.I.] Again

If you type AI like the way I typed it in the title, perhaps people think it’s AL (Al), so I’m going to call it A.I. out of convention. I am not talking about the name AL (put here in all caps for emphasis), but rather, I am discussing the technogical and societal phenomenon of A.I. Artificial Intelligence is what it stands for, and I’m sure you’ve seen it in the news so this paragraph was probably entirely unnecessary.

I have always said A.I. has always existed, virtually. It’s almost as if people forget that tools exist. There’s all this hype about A.I., and people forget that hammers and screwdrivers exist. I suppose people get hyped up about the latest technological breakthrough, perhaps, and they think it’ll either (a) make them a lot of money or (b) lose them a lot of money. I think that may be what it comes down to in this case.

As a translator, I fall more into camp (b), but let me explain something. I am not that afraid of A.I. And before you think, “this guy is insane,” let me explain myself.

In a certain way A.I. is anything created by mankind that aids in any way. So, I don’t think my hammer and screwdriver examples were too far off the mark. Yet I am not even arguing for an integration of A.I. as it’s commonly known in the media (although one could easily debate about whether there are multiple significances of A.I. in the media). I think A.I. is not only something entirely different than what it is commonly thought to be, but also that it is not to be feared at all.

Imagine this with a rational, cool-headed mind: you are contracted to do a job as a laborer on a house. You have the choice of using a hammer to nail nails into the framing of a house, or you have the other option of trying to place them in manually, with your hands only. This is a bit of the problem I wanted to discuss. Which are you going to pick? I hope you picked the hammer.

The A.I. problem is a bit more complex, as it involves data structures and what not.

But think of it this way: any tool that man creates can be manipulated for his best use. So that is one of the key reasons I feel that A.I. is not to be feared.

Another reason A.I. is not to be feared is that it will not reckon with the human mind. I don’t mean that A.I. can’t be “smart.” I mean that A.I. is precisely nonhuman. Therefore, it is not to be feared that it will “take over humanity” or something of the like. Maybe I exaggerate, but maybe it serves a function in this text. Imagine the hammer taking over society. When the hammer was invented, did it severely affect humankind’s ability to do what humans do? I don’t really imagine so. I think the same is true of A.I.

There seems to be no impending doom from A.I., therefore.

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Translation = …?

Words with Friends was a popular game a few years’ time ago. I enjoy experimenting with words. And by a few years’ time, I don’t know the exact figure, but it’s probably in the tens of years, most likely, to be precise (or not). Perhaps a valuable metaphor (or analogy, however you choose to look at it), is that Translation = Words without Friends. Now, before you get on my case because I’m being morose, look at it.

Translation is an utterly solitary practice. There are ways to make it less solitary. I mean, machines aren’t getting any more social, I don’t think. That is, the machine is never going to replace other people’s company. So, please, don’t get all down about machine translation. There is something really interesting out there called, drum roll, please . . . collaboration. I don’t even know if I used the elipses right there, and I don’t want to get out my usage dictionary, thank you very much.

So please consider working with a friend or something like that. Maybe collaborate on a project or two. I don’t know, make things INTERESTING. Because if they are not, you will drop out of the profession like a fly. I am not trying to intimidate, or maybe I am, because there are fewer people interested in translation these days, or at least so I hope. Not. I apologize for the lame attempt at a joke. But never trust anyone who says that work can’t be fun.

I enjoyed writing these prior posts on translation at about enjoyment level = 0. If there is a such thing as enjoyment level. I am in to psychology and stuff, so please bear with me. The past doesn’t really matter, as it doesn’t define us. The past, okay, I won’t get into a philosophical digression, but suffice it to say that (what? You stopped reading).

All I do know is that if you increase your enjoyment level, (whether that’s a real thing or not), you will have more fun on the job, and that is what we’re looking for. I.e. now we’re getting somewhere. Radical deductive thinking going on here.

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Novel and Thesis Writing

I have been working on my novel lately.

What I’ve learned about novel writing is it is not linear. What do I mean by that?

It is not a process that we can pin down and say, “Yes, this is how a novel is written!”

I am also writing a thesis. I’ve learned a similar process is at work with that. Although the thesis is academic and more formal (arguably), I still think a creative process similar to a novel applies. I have had (and wanted) to put so much psychic energy towards my novel and my thesis. Psychological energy? Either applies I think.

It is cool to see the process at work. I believe novel writing is interesting because it requires a way of seeing the world that is your own. Your own. Not anyone else’s.

And the thesis is similar, but as another step in the process of thesis writing, you must ensure what you’re saying is reasonably believable (or true, more or less). The same is true for novel writing, just in a different way.

There’s a term I like called verisimilitude (though I like the Spanish verosimilitud better). They mean almost identical things, don’t ask me, I just like the way the Spanish term sounds better.

The concept that word refers to is that of truthfulness or believablility. Would someone believe it (if it were a novel)? Or would it be convincing (in the case of a thesis)?

Those are the questions I am grappling with during these writing projects. Hopefully in some respects I am succeeding.

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A Real Dichotomy?

Sometimes, I think equivalence is impossible in languages (see my previous post for a short discussion of that), and sometimes I think it is possible. I do think that it is up to us as translators (and I would add that as non-translators as well of a linguistic community) to convey meaning in the same or in a similar sense as to what we thought was being communicated in the original. But that leaves so much subjectivity, doesn’t it?

So I won’t bore you with traditional discussions of equivalence or non-equivalence, and instead, I’d like to talk about the vibrancy and potential of translation. What I mean by this is that in understanding another culture, (or better said, trying to understand another culture because we will never fully understand cultures other than our own, and even with respect to our own, we may not have a full understanding of it), we ought to try to create new meanings. That is why I think translation is (or should be) a creative act. It is (or should be) not merely transferring the meanings of one language to another. That is supremely boring (in my opinion)!

The act of transferring meanings should be able to be done by a machine (and alas, it is being done by machines!)

So, my thesis here is just that translation ought to be creative. There is a sense in which translations have become commonplace, and so it is normal to view translation as a transfer of meaning. I am not saying that this kind of translation is not useful. I am just saying it does not interest me as a translator and/or linguist.

Of course, there exist a myriad of situations in which exaction and equivalence is not just preferred, it is mandatory. Take, for example, communications with legal and/or political implications. Of course, if the President of the USA is saying something publicly, we don’t want to, as translators (and intepreters), convey the wrong message. But even this admits of so much subjectivity. There is so much subjectivity in the act of translation and interpretation that it is very difficult to define what a proper translation is. And it is difficult to define whether a proper translation is even desirable, even if we assume we can define what it is.

But it also can be said that if we were to take the previous example, as in the President of the USA saying something publicly, we could say that even if we did translate this with a machine, even that could convey the wrong message. So therefore, there is no foolproof way of translation! There is no method of guaranteeing that a translation will meet the needs of the target audience. This leaves us in a bit of a predicament.

Or perhaps it does not. Perhaps it is true that even given this ambiguity, this principal characteristic of what translation ought to do or be, that translation still can be done. Of course it can still be done. It is just in our hands as translators what we’d like it to look like, I suppose.

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Translation and Philosophy

Where is the intersection of the two disciplines they call ancient? I am referring to Philosophy, as a domain, not a subject of study in School, as such I don’t necessarily have to capitalize it. But I do anyway. Regardless of whether I capitalize Philosophy, it remains a discipline. So that aside, I’d like to comment on Translation. Translation has only recently come into the spotlight in terms of its relevance to academia (strange, I know). Translation perhaps less deserves to be capitalized than Philosophy does, but I will leave Translation capitalized as well. Finally, I capitalize School because it is an institution that derives from power relations. Therefore, a School is probably a more general term than a school, but the relationship between the two is scarce, hardly existent, really. But that’s too much moralizing.

Translation as an ancient practice goes back for ages (we literally know this). In turn, Philosophy goes back for ages as well. We know this to be the case, too. The practice of philosophy probably goes back even further than we know it to have gone back in time. Notably, our conception of history is somewhat strange as well, but I will get to that at a later time.

Thus the practice of translation as in the practice of philosophy probably requires more explication as well. This is because translation probably arose out of a need to communicate. I don’t know who was communicating with whom, but there must have been a need to communicate.

But translation is an extension of primary communication. That is, translation requires the extra step of having to translate one message’s code into another code that conveys a similar (or the same) message. This denotes equivalence in the practice of translation.

I don’t think there really is equivalence though. Take it from semantic notions, but perhaps there is not a need to convey what equivalence is or means.

It may sound strange coming from a translator that equivalence probably doesn’t exist. Thus that the translator would question the notion the insitution of translation has created, practically, seems absurd. But it is not.

It happens not to be an absurd claim that translation does not require equivalence in order to exist.

I come at it from the perspective that there can be no equivalence because there are no two equal codes.

The existence of two equal codes would signify that translation is indeed unnecessary, in the strictest sense.

Thus equivalence renders translation unnecessary.

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Language Learning (and how it relates to Translation)

We have all heard something along the lines of, “you should learn a language; it increases the grey matter in your brain.” Right? Well, maybe not, but still, it probably does (research forthcoming). In all seriousness, though, language learning has the potential to benefit us in ways we hadn’t probably thought of before.

The first occurrence to me of why I ought to learn a language came in about high school, when I was listening to a favorite artist of mine, actually, his name is Conor Oberst, and he played (still plays) for a group called Bright Eyes. Now, he had a band called “Desaparecidos.” And in some sort of declaration of that band (I can’t remember if it was an album title – you see, it was some time ago), there was the resolution to “Learn Spanish.” Now if this sounds like a trite reason to learn Spanish, read on.

I didn’t make much of it at the time I realized that I too wanted to learn Spanish. I took it from a role model of mine (obviously, band leaders are role models to a lot of teenagers and people beyond their teenage years as well).

The funny thing was that I stuck with that resolution. And I stuck with it and kept sticking with it until now I am a translator.

The reason I’m sharing this is because when I thought about what I wanted to do in university, even, I kept coming back to that resolution to study Spanish. And I’d come back to it again in graduate school when studying translation in Spanish.

I’m not trying to engrain it in your brain that “dedication is key” or some slogan like that, which I’m sure you’ve heard before many other times.

I am saying, however, that language learning has shaped my life in interesting ways.

And now, how does this relate to translation?

I think it relates to translation because language learning follows a similar path to translation.

That is, translation follows specific patterns of language in the source language so that they may be “decoded” if you will, into the target language.

I don’t think that’s all that is going on in translation but we’ll leave that to another theorist to discover.

The whole point of this is to say that translation is an endeavor which utilizes language as its instrument, commencing with the printed words on a page or those scribbled down in a notebook. It doesn’t matter really, but I think translation is an art. It doesn’t matter really, but I think language learning is an art, too. Or maybe both things do matter, really.

I read a piece in a magazine yesterday about how the arts can help us.

I say that this is sage advice. I am not denigrating STEM in any way, but I think the arts have gotten the short shrift.

But arts don’t function in the same way as STEM does. They are distinct for a reason. There doesn’t even need to be balance between the two in educational funding. I just make this point because the arts, as they maybe do not produce as much industry and products as the STEM fields, which are necessary, by the way; but the arts are something that encompasses human life and that has been something necessary to our lives as human beings for time immemorial. I am arguing that translation is such an art as well.

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