[Wikipedia-l] Re: Africa info

Wed Feb 23 23:40:31 UTC 2005

Delirium wrote:

> Sabine Cretella wrote:
>
>> Never ever a machine will be able to translate correctly - not now, 
>> not tomorrow, not in 100 years - it's a dream many have - sorry, I 
>> must destroy it.
>
> A pedantic point, but this is assuming that machines are not capable 
> of human-level intelligence.  Many in the AI community would beg to 
> differ. =]
>
> (Although whether it'll be 10, 20, 50, 100, or 500 years before an 
> artificial intelligence can learn things like languages with the same 
> or better aptitude as humans is a matter of debate.)

I would call Sabine's comment realistic rather than pedantic. I realize 
that technophiles dream of these artificial solutions, but the best they 
can realistically hope for is competent interpretation of technical 
material.  When it comes to metaphor technophiles are playing in the 
right field of dreams. (I wonder how a machine would translate that into 
the language of people who know nothing about baseball.)

Ec