Google has launched its new near real-time transcription feature as part of Google Translate, which is available for eight languages. 

Google showed off the AI-powered feature this January and will now roll it out on Android with support transcribed translations between any of a set of eight languages, including English, French, German, Hindi, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Thai.

The Transcribe feature will roll out over this week, allowing Google Translate users to transcribe translated audio on the fly into text. 

Google explains that Translate didn’t previously cater to longer translated discussions, for example, at a conference, lecture or for story-telling. 

“We identified that gap and consider it an important part of human communication. This feature that transcribes audio into translated text fills that gap,” said a Google spokesperson.

Android users can try out the Transcribe feature after installing an update to the Google Translate app. Users then need to press the ‘Transcribe’ option available on the home screen of the app. They also need to choose the source and target languages from a dropdown menu. To start a transcription, the user needs to tap the mic icon. 

The feature isn’t available on the iOS Google Translate app yet but Google does plan to deliver it in the future.     

The machine learning behind Transcribe builds on Google’s previous work on its Live Transcribe accessibility feature on Android, which offers hearing-impaired users a real-time captioning service. Similar to Live Transcribe, the Google Translate Transcribe feature is powered by Google Cloud and its Tensor Processing Units (TPU), so transcription doesn’t happen on device.

The Live Transcribe accessibility feature is built on the same automatic speech-recognition technology used to provide automated captions on YouTube videos and Google Slides presentations. 

The Google Translate Transcribe feature is based on a combination of Google’s real-time continuous translation with TPU hardware. 

As a Google spokesperson put it, Google engineers stacked machine translation on top of a real-time automatic speech-recognition system, allowing the system to generate a new translation for every update to a recognized transcript.

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Many fear about the future of artificial intelligence and robotics. There are multiple factors supporting the claim that AI is in fact not a threat to humankind, but rather an advantage. One factor is that humans thrives off of social interaction and human communication, which robots evidently can’t provide. While online chatbots are a useful and efficient form of artificial intelligence, robots lack the necessary emotional connection to humans. 

In addition, while AI can replace certain human occupations, it also has the potential to increase job opportunities for people in the technology field. Lastly, as seen at Walmart, AI can improve the efficiency of employees without necessarily replacing them. Artificial intelligence is an amazing technological advancement and it isn’t a threat to humankind.

Most humans partake in social interaction countless times per day. Whether it’s speaking with family members, meeting with colleagues or ordering food and drink at a restaurant, social interaction keeps humankind moving forward. A study published in 1997 by Lisa F. Berkman and S. Leonard Syme, discovered that “people who lacked social and community ties were more likely to die in the follow-up period than those with more extensive contacts,” emphasizing the need for social interaction. 

People need social interaction to live long, healthy lives — and artificial intelligence can limit this. While AI can easily replace humans in various customer service jobs, the potential for AI to replace humans in the business world and other occupations based on social interaction is much more limited.

In addition to limiting social interaction, some fear that AI will replace many human jobs. Keith Block, author for The World Economic Forum, explains that advancements in the field of technology have historically created jobs. 

His claim is supported by various examples, such as “the advent of diesel, the internal combustion engine and electricity caused societal disruptions as workers moved from farms to cities, yet these innovations brought us Ford’s Model T, refrigeration, mechanised agriculture and an age of mass production that produced a new global middle class.” 

Keith suggests that while the structure of the job market may change, new jobs surrounding artificial intelligence will likely develop, as has happened in the past.

While AI can pose a targeted threat to white collar jobs, it will eventually spark a new wave of job opportunities once the initiatives are in full swing. Box is an “enterprise content management platform” meaning they deal with “sharing and accessing files,” as well as “data retention and governance.” Due to the relevance of AI in that field, their chief product officer Jeetu Patel discussed artificial intelligence in an interview for Forbes, saying it will “enable workforces to spend more energy on deep thinking versus completing low value tasks like data entry. With work that can be automated, enterprises can redistribute talent resources and gain cost savings.” 

Overall, artificial intelligence will benefit humankind greatly without posing a threat to our society. AI will replace some tedious forms of labor will be replaced in the workplace, developing our society to be higher functioning and more successful. While there are many pros and cons to the integration of AI in the workplace, it will benefit humanity more than it will harm it. 

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