Session

The advance of AI is causing alarm as industries and occupational cultures imagine impending doom…. But we have been here before. What is there in history, economics and philosophy that will help us survive as is, or even be reborn as something new and better?

For almost every product or service there are objective yardsticks to gauge fitness for purpose and inform cost-benefit choices among competing choices. Such yardsticks have not been developed for T&I. Particularly in Australia, the sector continues to base justification for payment on personal history, attributes, qualifications -- the credentials -- of a human translator.

I will suggest that AI might be the hook that drags T&I kicking and screaming into the modern world. I will pose questions that I hope will lead my audience to some crunchy philosophical insights. Starting with a look at the Dadaist movement that violently opposed the new technologies of the First World War, I will then dismantle various historical theories of value. I will present ideas, arguments and conceptual tools to support modification of theories of value, business models and lfe expectations. Finally, I will pinpoint the things that only humans can do, and why and how translators should still be able to extract payment from people needing translation.