Mastodawn

daughter asked me if the following impressions are correct

1) Google Translate is worse now
2) it's worse because it seems to flat out make up stuff
3) this must be because they're using so-called "generative AI", in a way their previous machine learning didn't
4) DeepL is also worse now for the same reason, but less so than Google Translate.

this is also my subjective impression of the state of things, but I have no idea how one would go about proving whether that's correct. it's not like we can get evidence of what's inside the proprietary black boxes

Show thread

Mirah Image

🍉

@elilla yeah, google translate has been changing meanings entirely on me recently, like, I'll be using it to polish/grammar check an email or whatever, and it'll just change a sentence to a somewhat similar sounding sentence with an entirely different meaning.

For example, I was refining an email to a doctor for a prescription renewal (still the same quarter, so I can do it without showing up and save us all time), and it just totally butchered it into talking about first appointments.

If I didn't know the languages on both sides, that would be a real issue.

Show thread

elilla&, autostopowiczka Mar 23

@mirahimage I feel like that's a good way of defining what's worse with Google Translation post-LLM era: it is now very dangerous to use it if you don't already know both languages. it always made errors, but now it makes something worse than errors (just flat out making shit up)