I did say "near" :)

I think you will be surprised. It won't take decades. More like within a decade.

Think about when 5G comes on stream (and then 6G etc). If that gets exploited properly you're going to have access to millions of conversations across the world, in near real time. That's a lot of data that can be crunched and analysed.

A lot of nuance in conversation comes from facial expression - AI can already work out if people are happy, sad etc. Google (and others, especially in China) will have the opportunity to learn so much from analysing data from existing tools - such as Duo - and the new tools that will get developed.

Sure, it might get foxed initially by a dialect or obscure language but for everyday languages? To be good enough for the average person to hold an average conversation? It'll happen. It's already well on it's way, and it's getting better.

Judging the likely success of AI translation on Google translate is going to look like saying a Tesla could never exist because a Model T was so basic.

Let's face it - if a spotty teenager can survive a 2 week french exchange off the back of a few years of 3 one hour lessons per week... AI is not going to have a problem.

Posted By: CWC, May 24, 21:28:07