The Linguist

10 The Linguist Vol/63 No/3 thelinguist.uberflip.com FEATURES Katharine Allen, SAFE-AI Given the relentless global pace of technological progress, our focus should be on educating ourselves and the industry about these technologies and developing a legal framework that balances innovation with measurable quality improvements that ensure safe, fair, ethical and accountable adoption of this technology. Along with my colleagues on the Interpreting SAFE-AI Task Force (safeaitf.org), I believe the challenge lies in shaping AI development to align with ethical standards and human values, not halting advancement. Our mission is to establish industry-wide guidance for the accountable adoption of AI in interpreting, facilitating dialogue among these solutions risk perpetuating imperfect language AI, deteriorating the human experience and exacerbating inequalities. Recent debate around rapid advances in generative AI has increased awareness of the risks inherent in the methods currently underpinning its development. But merely pausing AI development may not be sufficient or effective. A fresh approach is needed – one that sees the use of such technologies as part of a comprehensive solution for communication in a multilingual and inclusive society, that embraces the potential benefits of language AI while minimising its risks. The guiding question must be how language AI can be developed and used safely to create multilingual and multimodal content serving users of language services with diverse linguistic, sensory and cognitive abilities. Ethical principles are key: human- centric development, inclusiveness, fairness, complementarity to the work of language professionals, transparency and accountability. If such a shift can be achieved, language AI can have positive impacts on society and the economy by enhancing communication and accessibility, and promoting inclusive participation in digital society. A shift in direction and implementation of ethical principles will also foster genuine innovation in language AI, creating new market opportunities for many stakeholders. developers, vendors, buyers, practitioners and end-users. We track and assess AI capabilities in real-time language interpretation – covering translation captioning, multilingual captioning, speech-to-text, speech-to-speech, speech or text-to-sign and sign-to-speech or text. LLMs have shown impressive advancements but cannot replace the human interpreter's skillset to manage nuanced, culturally aware and contextually sensitive communication. Human communication encompasses not just language, but also emotions, cultural context, and non-verbal cues – elements AI struggles to replicate. Additionally, there are over 7,000 spoken and 300 sign languages, yet AI technology is only available for a handful, creating a digital divide where many are left behind. Language barriers cannot be magically overcome by a single technology; the world needs to adopt a more nuanced understanding of human communication. Ongoing and widespread public and client education will be a crucial part of this work. To safeguard human expertise in interpreting, SAFE-AI advocates for robust ethical legislation framing AI development and how it is used for interpreting. This includes identifying where AI can enhance language services and where human intervention is essential. Our 'Perception Survey and Advisory Group Research Report' represents an initial step in building reliable knowledge about AI in interpreting (see https://cutt.ly/CSAinsights and https://cutt.ly/AIxAI). As the next step, we recently published best practice guidance to determine when AI technologies can safely expand multilingual access and when the risks outweigh the benefits (see https://safeaitf.org/guidance/). Our goal is to provide actionable insights for a broad diversity of stakeholders, including policymakers, developers, educators, practitioners, buyers and vendors, so they can integrate AI interpreting as an effective and ethical option. © SHUTTERSTOCK

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