Dave Farber
2018-07-21 23:14:07 UTC
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/j5npeg/why-is-google-translate-spitting-out-sinister-religious-prophecies?utm_campaign=sharebutton <https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/j5npeg/why-is-google-translate-spitting-out-sinister-religious-prophecies?utm_campaign=sharebutton>
Why Is Google Translate Spitting Out Sinister Religious Prophecies?
Google Translate is moonlighting as a deranged oracleâand experts say itâs likely because of the spooky nature of neural networks. SHARE TWEET Jon Christian Jul 21 2018, 2:04am
Type the word âdogâ into Google Translate 19 times, request that the nonsensical message be flipped from Maori into English, and out pops what appears to be a garbled religious prophecy.
âDoomsday Clock is three minutes at twelve,â it reads. âWe are experiencing characters and a dramatic developments in the world, which indicate that we are increasingly approaching the end times and Jesus' return.â
Thatâs just one of many bizarre and sometimes ominous translations that users on Reddit <https://www.reddit.com/r/TranslateGate> and elsewhere have dredged up from Google Translate, Googleâs decade-old service that can now interpret messages in over 100 languages. In Somali, for instance, strings of the word âagâ translate into missives about the âsons of Gershon,â the âname of the LORD,â and references to Biblical terminology like âcubitsâ and Deuteronomy.
On Twitter, people have blamed the strange translations on ghosts <https://twitter.com/snakeycactus/status/1000361849785913345> and demons <https://twitter.com/postupcabello/status/1000562152179208192>. Users on a subreddit called TranslateGate have speculated <https://www.reddit.com/r/TranslateGate/comments/7mfoka/read_before_you_post/> that some of the strange outputs might be drawn from text gathered from emails or private messages.
âGoogle Translate learns from examples of translations on the web and does not use âprivate messagesâ to carry out translations, nor would the system even have access to that content,â said Justin Burr, a Google spokesperson, in an email. âThis is simply a function of inputting nonsense into the system, to which nonsense is generated.â
When Motherboard provided Google with an example of the eerie messages, its translation disappeared from Google Translate.
There are several possible explanations for the strange outputs. Itâs possible that the sinister messages are the result of disgruntled Google employees, for instance, or that mischievous users are abusing the âSuggest an editâ button, which accepts suggestions for better translations of a given text.
Andrew Rush, an assistant professor at Harvard who studies natural language processing and computer translation, said that internal quality filters would probably catch that type of manipulation, however. Itâs more likely, Rush said, that the strange translations are related to a change Google Translate made several years ago, when it started using a technique <https://www.blog.google/products/translate/higher-quality-neural-translations-bunch-more-languages/> known as âneural machine translation.â
In neural machine translation, the system is trained with large numbers of texts in one language and corresponding translations in another, to create a model for moving between the two. But when itâs fed nonsense inputs, Rush said, the system can âhallucinateâ bizarre outputsânot unlike the way Googleâs DeepDream identifies and accentuates <https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/53dwg3/heres-how-google-deep-dream-generates-those-trippy-images> patterns in images.
âThe models are black-boxes, that are learned from as many training instances that you can find,â Rush said. âThe vast majority of these will look like human language, and when you give it a new one it is trained to produce something, at all costs, that also looks like human language. However if you give it something very different, the best translation will be something still fluent, but not at all connected to the input.â
Sean Colbath, a senior scientist at BBN Technologies who works on machine translation, agreed that strange outputs are probably due to Google Translateâs algorithm looking for order in chaos. He also pointed out that the languages that generate the strangest resultsâSomali, Hawaiian and Maoriâhave smaller bodies of translated text than more widely spoken languages like English or Chinese. As a result, he said, itâs possible that Google used religious texts like the Bible, which has been translated into many languages, to train its model in those languages, resulting in the religious content.
âIf they tried to build a model out of that stuff, it may be that the model simply throws a hail-mary pass (pun semi-intended) and barfs out a piece of its training,â said Colbath, who emphasized that he was speaking for himself rather than for his employer, in a chat.
Rush agreed that if Google is using the Bible to train its model, it could explain some of the strange outputs. Indeed, several of the bizarre translations in Somali resemble specific passages from the Old Testament. Exodus 27:18 <http://biblehub.com/exodus/27-18.htm> references a hundred cubits, and several verses including Numbers 3:18 <http://biblehub.com/numbers/3-18.htm> discuss the sons of Gershon.
Burr, the Google spokesperson, declined to say whether Google Translateâs training materials include religious texts.
Sometimes, though, it does feel as though the algorithm is channeling uncanny spiritual energiesâor even cracking a joke.
After all, Google Translate interprets âw hy ar e th e tran stla tions so wei rdâ in Somali, for instance, as âIt is a great way to make it so much better.â
-------------------------------------------Why Is Google Translate Spitting Out Sinister Religious Prophecies?
Google Translate is moonlighting as a deranged oracleâand experts say itâs likely because of the spooky nature of neural networks. SHARE TWEET Jon Christian Jul 21 2018, 2:04am
Type the word âdogâ into Google Translate 19 times, request that the nonsensical message be flipped from Maori into English, and out pops what appears to be a garbled religious prophecy.
âDoomsday Clock is three minutes at twelve,â it reads. âWe are experiencing characters and a dramatic developments in the world, which indicate that we are increasingly approaching the end times and Jesus' return.â
Thatâs just one of many bizarre and sometimes ominous translations that users on Reddit <https://www.reddit.com/r/TranslateGate> and elsewhere have dredged up from Google Translate, Googleâs decade-old service that can now interpret messages in over 100 languages. In Somali, for instance, strings of the word âagâ translate into missives about the âsons of Gershon,â the âname of the LORD,â and references to Biblical terminology like âcubitsâ and Deuteronomy.
On Twitter, people have blamed the strange translations on ghosts <https://twitter.com/snakeycactus/status/1000361849785913345> and demons <https://twitter.com/postupcabello/status/1000562152179208192>. Users on a subreddit called TranslateGate have speculated <https://www.reddit.com/r/TranslateGate/comments/7mfoka/read_before_you_post/> that some of the strange outputs might be drawn from text gathered from emails or private messages.
âGoogle Translate learns from examples of translations on the web and does not use âprivate messagesâ to carry out translations, nor would the system even have access to that content,â said Justin Burr, a Google spokesperson, in an email. âThis is simply a function of inputting nonsense into the system, to which nonsense is generated.â
When Motherboard provided Google with an example of the eerie messages, its translation disappeared from Google Translate.
There are several possible explanations for the strange outputs. Itâs possible that the sinister messages are the result of disgruntled Google employees, for instance, or that mischievous users are abusing the âSuggest an editâ button, which accepts suggestions for better translations of a given text.
Andrew Rush, an assistant professor at Harvard who studies natural language processing and computer translation, said that internal quality filters would probably catch that type of manipulation, however. Itâs more likely, Rush said, that the strange translations are related to a change Google Translate made several years ago, when it started using a technique <https://www.blog.google/products/translate/higher-quality-neural-translations-bunch-more-languages/> known as âneural machine translation.â
In neural machine translation, the system is trained with large numbers of texts in one language and corresponding translations in another, to create a model for moving between the two. But when itâs fed nonsense inputs, Rush said, the system can âhallucinateâ bizarre outputsânot unlike the way Googleâs DeepDream identifies and accentuates <https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/53dwg3/heres-how-google-deep-dream-generates-those-trippy-images> patterns in images.
âThe models are black-boxes, that are learned from as many training instances that you can find,â Rush said. âThe vast majority of these will look like human language, and when you give it a new one it is trained to produce something, at all costs, that also looks like human language. However if you give it something very different, the best translation will be something still fluent, but not at all connected to the input.â
Sean Colbath, a senior scientist at BBN Technologies who works on machine translation, agreed that strange outputs are probably due to Google Translateâs algorithm looking for order in chaos. He also pointed out that the languages that generate the strangest resultsâSomali, Hawaiian and Maoriâhave smaller bodies of translated text than more widely spoken languages like English or Chinese. As a result, he said, itâs possible that Google used religious texts like the Bible, which has been translated into many languages, to train its model in those languages, resulting in the religious content.
âIf they tried to build a model out of that stuff, it may be that the model simply throws a hail-mary pass (pun semi-intended) and barfs out a piece of its training,â said Colbath, who emphasized that he was speaking for himself rather than for his employer, in a chat.
Rush agreed that if Google is using the Bible to train its model, it could explain some of the strange outputs. Indeed, several of the bizarre translations in Somali resemble specific passages from the Old Testament. Exodus 27:18 <http://biblehub.com/exodus/27-18.htm> references a hundred cubits, and several verses including Numbers 3:18 <http://biblehub.com/numbers/3-18.htm> discuss the sons of Gershon.
Burr, the Google spokesperson, declined to say whether Google Translateâs training materials include religious texts.
Sometimes, though, it does feel as though the algorithm is channeling uncanny spiritual energiesâor even cracking a joke.
After all, Google Translate interprets âw hy ar e th e tran stla tions so wei rdâ in Somali, for instance, as âIt is a great way to make it so much better.â
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