Thanks to AI, I waste less time declining “job” offers that basically pay $2 an hour since cheap clients like that are satisfied with AI.
Plenty of businesses and artists who value my experience as a translator/interpreter still pay me my asking rate.
I feel like giving up.
What a load of bullshit. I want to see AI deal with “unprecedented minor emergency no. 42069” while simultaneously serving drinks and reassuring someone that everything is alright, no need to panic and/or start a fight. Physical jobs will be the safest anyway.
Also, “historian”? What the fuck? AI is spectacularly bad at doing even passable science with any accuracy, and in a discipline so nuanced and inherently biased as history? No chance at doing anything remotely science-y. Maybe it can replace the writers of pop-history articles with its surface level rendition of established facts, but even those are supposed to be entertaining and not lifeless, boring slop. Then again, most historians are struggling to find a job anyway, so not much of a change here.
But yeah, most translaters are screwed. Turns out, large LANGUAGE models are pretty good at transforming languages. Sure, legally binding translations might need some human oversight and quality literature translations might hold out a bit as well, but largely, that is one job that I believe has been in steady decline and will continue so.
Maybe you think it’s not any good, and maybe all the humans who use it don’t think it’s any good, but Microsoft says it’s great, and they’re the ones who stand to lose all three money.
“You are absolutely right, ma’am. I understand why my spilling your drink in your lap has caused you some distress, and I truly sympathize with your son’s concussion from the blunt impact caused by my reckless flailing to fix my previous mistake. Please listen to this advertisement while another attendant comes to assist you.”


