Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
 |
Google Zero-Shot Translation Gives Star Trek Fans Hope
Google's efforts to improve machine translation of languages are legendary (like Google Translate Has 51 Offline Language Packs), but now they are going well beyond what most science fiction fans are willing to suspend their disbelief for.
Zero-shot translation involves translation between language pairs that have never been explicitly seen by the system before.
This inspired us to ask the following question: Can we translate between a language pair which the system has never seen before? An example of this would be translations between Korean and Japanese where Korean⇄Japanese examples were not shown to the system. Impressively, the answer is yes — it can generate reasonable Korean⇄Japanese translations, even though it has never been taught to do so. We call this “zero-shot” translation, shown by the yellow dotted lines in the animation. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time this type of transfer learning has worked in Machine Translation.
The success of the zero-shot translation raises another important question: Is the system learning a common representation in which sentences with the same meaning are represented in similar ways regardless of language — i.e. an “interlingua”? Using a 3-dimensional representation of internal network data, we were able to take a peek into the system as it translates a set of sentences between all possible pairs of the Japanese, Korean, and English languages.
Fans of Star Trek will believe anything - even a Universal Translator that can translate between ordinary english and ... lizardese? In the 1967 episode Arena, Captain Kirk is whisked off to a distant planet to battle a creature never encountered before by humans - a Gorn. If you're impatient, start at about 45 seconds into the trailer for this episode below. But why would you?
Here’s how it works. Let’s say we train a multilingual system with Japanese⇄English and Korean⇄English examples, shown by the solid blue lines in the animation. Our multilingual system, with the same size as a single GNMT system, shares its parameters to translate between these four different language pairs. This sharing enables the system to transfer the “translation knowledge” from one language pair to the others. This transfer learning and the need to translate between multiple languages forces the system to better use its modeling power.
(Star Trek Arena trailer)
Note that the translator works immediately. Compare to the more realistic (hah!) translator discs from Larry Niven's 1970 masterpiece Ringworld:
The tattooed one made a short speech. That was luck. The autopilot would need data before it could begin a translation...Presently the discs were filling in words and phrases...
Via Zero-Shot Translation with Google’s Multilingual Neural Machine Translation System.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 11/13/2016)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 0 )
Related News Stories - (" Artificial Intelligence ")
Google's Nano Banana Pro Presents Handwritten Math Solutions
'...copy was turned out in a charming and entirely feminine handwriting.' - Isaac Asimov (1949)
Woman Marries Computer, Vonnegut's Dream Comes True
'Men are made of protoplasm... Lasts forever.' - Kurt Vonnegut
ChatGPT Now Participates in Group Chats
'...the city was their laboratory in human psychology.'
'AI Assistants' Are Actually Less Reliable For News
'Most men updated their PIP on New Year's Day...' - Arthur C. Clarke, 1978.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
The Zapata Air Scooter Would Be Great In A Science Fiction Story
'Betty's slapdash style.'
Thermostabilized Wet Meat Product (NASA Prototype)
There are no orbiting Michelin stars. Yet.
Could Crystal Batteries Generate Power For Centuries?
'Power could be compressed thus into an inch-square cube of what looked like blue-white ice'
India Ponders Always-On Smartphone Location Tracking
'It is necessary... for your own protection.'
Amazon Will Send You Heinlein's Knockdown Cabin
'It's so light that you can set it up in five minutes by yourself...'
Is It Time To Forbid Human Driving?
'Heavy penalties... were to be applied to any one found driving manually-controlled machines.'
Replace The Smartphone With A Connected Edge Node For AI Inference
'Buy a Little Dingbat... electropen, wrist watch, pocketphone, pocket radio, billfold ... all in one.'
Artificial Skin For Robots Is Coming Right Along
'... an elastic, tinted material that had all the feel and appearance of human flesh and epidermis.'
Robot Guard Dog On Duty
I might also be thinking of K-9 from Doctor Who.
Wearable Artificial Fabric Muscles
'It is remarkable that the long leverages of their machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature...'
BrainBridge Concept Transplant Of Human Head Proposed
'Briquet’s head seemed to think that to find and attach a new body to her head was as easy as to fit and sew a new dress.'
Google's Nano Banana Pro Presents Handwritten Math Solutions
'...copy was turned out in a charming and entirely feminine handwriting.'
Edible Meat-Like Fungus Like Barbara Hambly's Slunch?
'It was almost unheard of for slunch to spread that fast...'
Sunday Robotics 'Memo' Bot Has Unique Training Glove
'He then started hand movements of definite pattern...'
Woman Marries Computer, Vonnegut's Dream Comes True
'Men are made of protoplasm... Lasts forever.'
Natural Gait With Prosthetic Connected To Nervous System
'The leg was to function, in a way, as a servo-mechanism operated by Larry’s brain...'
