A I Translation

It’s not uncommon for, say, an 800 bed urban hospital to spend $1m a year on language translation services. And, for several years, IBM has worked on a hand-held translation machine that could toggle between an English-speaking doctor and a Mandarin-speaking patient. IBM’s success was limited, but now Microsoft A. I. engineers have succeeded in translating “news” stories between English and Mandarin with human parity. Of course, “news” is a general field, and “tell me what’s wrong” is specialized; so, it may be a while before a medical translator is clinic-ready—but maybe not too long. MORE

Image Credit:   NewScientist