Merging Minds Gabriel Fairman, Javi Díaz, Bureau Works

Come take a walk through the grass with our Merging Minds host Javi Diaz and his guest Jamie Brown! They make conversational stops at the opera, in Brazil, and they, of course, end up talking about the localization industry!

Ted Gibson is pretty impressed with how well #LLMs can produce English. But, he doesn’t think they will ever be able to produce the languages of the indigenous tribes he worked with in the Amazon. The reason? Data. Language models have been trained with trillions of words to make today's English results. But, there simply aren't enough words being written or spoken to make good models in many other languages. This challenge leads Ted and Gabriel to discuss the differences between human language learning and language models.

The #localization industry needs creative and competent people now more than ever. If you have a passion for languages, now is the time to double down on your skills and dig out your niche. Things are changing, but there are a ton of new opportunities cropping up everywhere. Don’t give up and don’t be scared. In this episode of #MergingMinds, Florian joins our host Javi Diaz to chat about the future of the industry!

Large Language Models have a problem: The Symbol Grounding Problem. Even though they can write full essays and have conversations, they can’t communicate. The words that they produce have no root. But they aren’t missing etymological roots - they are missing existential roots. If language exists as a reflection of experience, what happens when there is no experience to reflect? What are words when they reflect nothing?

What can a crowded bus in Argentina teach you about #leadership? What does Harry Potter have to do with starting a career in #localization? What can we do to weather changes in our industry? These are all questions that today’s guest can answer!

Are we the owners of our own ideas? We often like to think so, but linguist, professor, and writer Donna Jo Napoli isn’t so sure. She sees creative conception as a deeply collaborative process: the final "idea" is just the tip of an iceberg that runs deep into what you have shared and experienced in your life. So, if our ideas aren’t even our own, why are we afraid of sharing our creativity with Generative AI?