Baidu showed off the speed of its pocket translator for the first time in the United States during an afternoon presentation at MIT Technology Review‘s EmTech Digital conference in San Francisco.
The Chinese Internet giant has made significant strides improving machine language translation since 2015, using an advanced form of artificial intelligence known as deep learning, said Hua Wu, the company’s chief scientist focused on natural-language processing. On stage, the Internet-connected device was able to almost instantly translate a short conversation between Wu and senior editor Will Knight. It easily rendered Knight’s questions—including “Where can I buy this device?” and “When will machines replace humans?”—into Mandarin, and relayed Wu’s responses in clear, if machine-inflected, English.
(Knight’s own rough Mandarin, however, seemed to be a challenge beyond the device’s current ability.)
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