The ATA Chronicle - November/December 2024 - 12

The Safe
(The following originally appeared in the October 2024 issue of
Intercambios, the newsletter of ATA's Spanish Language Division.)
W
hat is the SAFE AI
Task Force and
how can it help
Task Force
Through our inclusive approach, the SAFE AI
Task Force has successfully brought together
diverse perspectives to shape the future of
AI in interpreting.
By Holly Silvestri
interpreters? The Task Force
was launched in June 2023 in
response to the creation and
dissemination of ChatGPT
and the public response to it.
The first iteration of ChatGPT
launched on November 30,
2022, crossed one million
users in just five days, and
gained 100 million active
users by January 2023. (By
comparison, it took Netflix
over a year to gain one
million users.) As a result,
the press was filled with
predictions of how AI could
and would replace many
professions, including
professional interpreters.
A small group of leaders in
the interpreting profession,
perceiving the immediacy of
risk and disruption, formed
a task force to provide a
rapid response. Based on the
previous experience of the
translation industry's slow
response to the disruption
of machine translation, the
group aimed to be more
proactive, seeking the
inclusion of a wide swath
of stakeholders who could
help provide guidance and
guardrails to the rapid
adoption of AI in interpreting.
The smaller group worked fast
to gather those stakeholders
in a series of public meetings
in the summer of 2023. (More
information about our origins
and vision are available on the
SAFE AI Task Force website.)
Mission
The mission statement on
our website underscores the
Task Force's collaborative
approach:
12 The ATA Chronicle | November/December 2024
Our mission is to establish,
disseminate, and promote
industry-wide guidelines
and best practices for the
responsible adoption of
AI in interpreting through
facilitating dialogue and
action among vendors, buyers,
qualified practitioners, end
users, and other stakeholders.
While we recognize there
are real opportunities for
expanding language access
with this technology, there
is also real risk. We aim to
influence the use of this
technology when applied to
interpreting with the ultimate
goal of its safe and accountable
adoption for all involved.
Additionally, and uniquely,
the SAFE AI Task Force is
the only organization of its
kind that is led by spoken,
signed language, and Deaf
interpreters, along with
high-profile members of
the Deaf and hard of hearing
community. (If you're
interested in learning more
about Deaf interpreters,
visit the National Deaf Center
website.) We aim to be as
inclusive as possible in our
response to AI and have a
unified response from all
interpreters and interpreting
stakeholders to this
technological advancement in
our field.
Our objectives are:
y Document the state of AI's
capabilities in real-time
language interpreting,
which includes speech-totext,
speech-to-speech,
multilingual captioning,
and translation captioning.
y Identify key use cases
where AI is being or
could soon be applied to
www.atanet.org
https://ataspd.org/ https://nationaldeafcenter.org https://nationaldeafcenter.org https://safeaitf.org/
The ATA Chronicle - November/December 2024

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