Merging Minds

Pascale Tremblay has always been curious, open-minded, and ready to make connections with other people. This is exactly the attitude that got her started in localization as a young woman, and the attitude that has helped succeed as a loc leader for the last 20 years!

Now, this attitude is what is helping her lead teams through rapid changes in the localization industry. She leads with care, creativity, and a constant curiosity.

Listen to Pascale chat with our Merging Minds host Javi Diaz as they talk about Pascale’s leadership journey and her outlook on the future of loc!

They discuss:

• Growing up in a town where no one spoke English, then hitting the big city
• The “post-localization” era
• The importance of travel in building connections
• The fundamental skills of a leader
• How language is not linear
• Multilingual, multimodal content creation
• How to develop a curious and creative mindset around AI
• The different operational structures that will be needed in the future of loc
• Thinking of AI as a “transformation of your work”
• Incremental change working towards a larger vision
• Understanding the business context of change
• Going all in on a new tool
• The future being based on connection

And more!

Click play to join our Merging Minds host Javi Diaz and his guest, Pascale Tremblay, for a conversation about language, leadership, and looking ahead to the future.

You can learn more about Pascale Tremblay here.

P.S. Don't forget to leave a review and subscribe to Merging Minds Podcast powered by Bureau Works for more thought-provoking podcast episodes.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and wherever else podcasts are found!

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Tools can be used for good or for evil, and AI is newest, most powerful tool around. This means that when we use it for good, our impact is amplified. This is exactly what Logan Nye, MD has been doing.

Dr. Nye is a physician and coder who is developing artificial intelligence tools for healthcare from a first principles perspective. His goal is to use the predictive capabilities of LLMs to help us identify risk factors for disease as early as possible.

Logan is the Founder of Galen Health, is an MD, and is currently pursuing a Master’s Degree in Computer Science.

Listen to Merging Minds Host Gabriel Fairman talk with Logan about how AI can be used to amplify your positive impact, being mission driven, and much more.

They discuss:

• How humans relate to one another and how it can be distorted by algorithmic matchmaking
• If tech needs to “catch up” to humans or if there is a fundamental difference between humans and machines
• First principles for medicine
• AI uncovering predictive patterns for pancreatic cancer
• How tools can be used for good and evil
• Being Mission Driven vs. Practice Driven or Dogma Driven
• AI augmenting humans, not replacing them
• Being flexible in the details, but steadfast in your mission
• Digital twins
• The energy and cost limitations on data processing with AI
• The benefit of not knowing the future
• How much knowledge impacts our actions
• Specific truths vs. broad truths
• Cultural adoption lags behind tech capabilities
• At what point is better decision making a bad thing

And more!

Click play to join our Merging Minds host Gabriel Fairman and his guest, Logan Nye, for a great conversation about AI!

You can learn more about Logan Nye here.

P.S. Don't forget to leave a review and subscribe to Merging Minds Podcast powered by Bureau Works for more thought-provoking podcast episodes.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and wherever else podcasts are found!

Podcast powered by Bureau Works, a cloud localization platform that makes complex translation tasks simple and predictable.

www.bureauworks.com

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Have you ever met someone more interested in going to the laundromat than the museum? Now’s your chance! Sean Hopwood is so intent on authentically connecting with people that he goes to the laundromat and gives directions for fun.

But, as a polyglot of 7 languages and the owner of his own translation company it is clear that Sean doesn’t just make small talk. He keeps his love for human interaction at the center of his leadership, and you can see it in how he talks about his professional journey.

Join our Merging Minds Host Javi Diaz for an incredible conversation with Sean Hopwood as they discuss:

• Sean’s started as an interpreter and his early jobs
• Founding a translation company with Microsoft Word
• The evolution of LSPs
• The power of belief in self for entrepreneurship (and life)
• Tricking your mind
• The joy of interacting with people when travelling
• How “love languages” can work for professional life
• The power of recognizing someone’s humanity
• AI as something that helps translators, not replaces them
• The business value of translation
• Tips for leaders and entrepreneurs

And more!

Click play to join Javi and Sean for a great conversation about languages and leadership.

You can learn more about Sean Hopwood here.

P.S. Don't forget to leave a review and subscribe to Merging Minds Podcast powered by Bureau Works for more thought-provoking podcast episodes.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and wherever else podcasts are found!

Podcast powered by Bureau Works, a cloud localization platform that makes complex translation tasks simple and predictable.

www.bureauworks.com

Follow us on YouTube and X @bureau_works for more and don't miss the latest live sessions and offers on LinkedIn:

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If anyone understands the intersection of writing and AI, it is Stephen Marche. Stephen first started experimenting with “algorithmic writing” back in 2017 when he built his own writing model.

Since then Stephen has written an “infinite story” with AI and he created the first ever book written with AI to be reviewed by the New York Times, “Death of An Author”.

Outside of the AI world, Stephen is also an accomplished writer. He is a novelist, essayist, and columnist whose writing has been published in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Esquire, and many others.

Merging Minds Host Gabriel Fairman sits down with Stephen to talk about artificial intelligence, authorship, and all of the complications that go with it. They get philosophical, they get political, and they get to the bottom of some of the biggest challenges our society is facing when it comes to our perception of AI.

They discuss:

Can you be an author without writing the words?

The Moravec paradox: AI is good at hard things and bad at “simple” things

40-adjective GPT prompts

Writing a novel with AI

The resistance to AI in Western Culture

The fear and greed in narratives about AI

The influence of social media on perceptions of AI

“The Microwave of Language”

How human supervision can maximize the technology

The potential for AI be a force for good

Information civil wars

Why AI ethics institutes don’t scare AI companies

Creative AI experiments at Disney and Warner Media

Apocalyptic sensibilities

Being better than the collective intelligence

And more!

Click play to join our Merging Minds host Gabriel Fairman and his guest, Stephen Marche, for a conversation about AI, authorship, and humanity!

You can learn more about Stephen Marche here.

P.S. Don't forget to leave a review and subscribe to Merging Minds Podcast powered by Bureau Works for more thought-provoking podcast episodes.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and wherever else podcasts are found!

Podcast powered by Bureau Works, a cloud localization platform that makes complex translation tasks simple and predictable.

www.bureauworks.com

Follow us on YouTube and X @bureau_works for more and don't miss the latest live sessions and offers on LinkedIn:

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The localization industry is high tech, fast-paced, and ever-changing. That is one of the many reasons we love it. But there can be a dark side to that sort of non-stop culture:

Burnout.

Laura DeCook is a specialist in burnout and mental health that works with organizations of all sizes to bring advocacy and education about mental wellbeing to the workplace. Her work is informed by her own  mental health journey and her professional experience of establishing a mental wellbeing program for Expedia Group. She has worked in the film industry and in tech, two intense industries with high rates of burnout and stress.

Listen to Laura and Javi discuss mental wellness at work, as well as:

The silver lining of pandemic

Supporting employees as whole people

Higher level execs needing to lead by example

The pros and cons of technology for mental health.

Laura’s experience at Google and Expedia

Laura’s time in the film industry and working on Star Wars

The mental health epidemic in US

The value of being a nonjudgmental listener

The scary and exciting future ahead

And more!

Click play to join our Merging Minds host Javi Diaz and his guest, Laura DeCook, for a conversation about mental wellness in the workplace!

You can learn more about Laura DeCook and LDC Wellbeing here: https://www.ldcwellbeing.com/

P.S. Don't forget to leave a review and subscribe to Merging Minds Podcast powered by Bureau Works for more thought-provoking podcast episodes.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and wherever else podcasts are found!

Podcast powered by Bureau Works, a cloud localization platform that makes complex translation tasks simple and predictable.

www.bureauworks.com

Follow us on YouTube and X @bureau_works for more and don't miss the latest live sessions and offers on LinkedIn:

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Sibelan Forrester isn’t threatened by AI, she is curious about it. As a professor of Russian Literature at Swarthmore College and a literary translator, she has seen how technology has made its way into creative work. But instead of shying away from tech, she gave her students a strange assignment: "Tell ChatGPT to write a paper about something you really care about. Then, see if you are happy with the output."

Professor Forrester wants her students to keep an open mind to the suggestions that new tools can provide because she sees them as helpful thought partners. And, she is skeptical that our writing and speech were ever really our own to begin with.

Come listen as Professor Forrester speaks with Merging Minds Host Gabriel Fairman about translation, authorship, and the originality of ideas in this latest episode.

They also discuss:

• Permeable Discourse
• Does synthetic discourse interfere with natural discourse?
• The influence of suggestions on the creative thought process
• The power of loneliness in writing
• How Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy had help with their masterpieces
• How discourse has no true point of origin
• How to judge intellectual quality, not just work quantity
• How Facebook isn’t too bad a translating Russian poetry
• How to incentivize agency, not laziness
• The dangers of human editors
• The importance of cultural and literary analysis in business translations
• The issue with the current economic model in translation

And more!

Click play to join our Merging Minds host Gabriel Fairman and his guest, Sibelan Forrester, for a conversation about language, creativity, and technology!

You can learn more about Sibelan Forrester here.

P.S. Don't forget to leave a review and subscribe to Merging Minds Podcast powered by Bureau Works for more thought-provoking podcast episodes.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and wherever else podcasts are found!

Podcast powered by Bureau Works, a cloud localization platform that makes complex translation tasks simple and predictable.

www.bureauworks.com

Follow us on YouTube and X @bureau_works for more and don't miss the latest live sessions and offers on LinkedIn:

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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! 

Jamie Brown is a Localization Consultant, former Chief Language Officer, and overall optimist who overcame a childhood stammer and fear of speaking to become an accomplished linguist and public speaker. Jamie has given a TedX talk and is currently working on composing choir music in “non-traditional” languages to bring more diversity to the concert hall. 

Join Jamie and Javi as they discuss: 

- The overlap between music and language 

- Writing choir music in new languages for classical music 

- Having a stammer as a child who loved studying languages 

- Jamie’s life-changing experience in Brazil 

- The fundamental desire to understand different people and different cultures 

- The importance of preparation for public speaking 

- The importance of having a team with diverse skills 

- Needing humility to hire people who are better than you at things 

- Recognizing the “humans” on your team 

- Learning to adapt your message for different stakeholders 

- How to make difficult decisions as a #leader 

- Javi’s networking advice 

And of course, the beauty of walking barefoot in the grass on an especially hard day. 

Click play to hear Jamie and Javi’s conversation!

You can learn more about Jamie Brown here: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-brown-8a436540/ 

www.jamiebrown.info 

P.S. Don't forget to leave a comment and subscribe to Merging Minds Podcast powered by Bureau Works for more thought-provoking podcast episodes.

Podcast powered by Bureau Works, a cloud localization platform that makes complex translation tasks simple and predictable.

www.bureauworks.com

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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. They ask: 

Why can humans learn a language with so few words, while models need so many? 

Ted Gibson runs a language lab at MIT and works on all aspects of human language. He has worked with two indigenous populations in the Amazon and has a PhD in Computational Linguistics. Ted and Gabriel’s discussion leads them to discuss some of the most prominent theories of linguistics and to dive deep into human #language cognition! 

They discuss: 

- If LLMs have proved Chomsky wrong 

- Low resource and high resource languages 

- The lack of consensus on how language operates 

- How machine learning differs from human learning 

- How language is used for connection, not just passing information 

- The appeal of “automatic” #translation products 

- Language cognition across cultures 

- The challenge of universal language rules 

And more! 

Click play to join our Merging Minds host Gabriel Fairman and his guest, Ted Gibson, for a deep conversation about language, the human mind, and how it is very different from the machine! You can learn more about Ted Gibson here: https://tedlab.mit.edu/ 

P.S. Don't forget to subscribe to Merging Minds Podcast powered by Bureau Works for more thought-provoking podcast episodes.

Podcast powered by Bureau Works, a cloud localization platform that makes complex translation tasks simple and predictable.

www.bureauworks.com

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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. 

This is advice straight from Florian Faes, Managing Director and Co-founder of #Slator (the localization industry’s largest intelligence publication). If anyone is qualified to give advice about our industry, it is him. 

In this episode of #MergingMinds, Florian joins our host Javi Diaz to chat about the future of the industry as well as: 

- How to separate hype about #AI from reality 

- What kinds of people the industry needs 

- The need for creative people 

- The “3 buckets” for a career in localization 

- Finding jobs in #loc 

- A key piece of advice for starting out in localization 

- Dealing with fear of the future 

- The importance of keeping experts in the loop 

Click play to hear from Florian and Javi as they carve a path forward in uncertain times! And don’t forget to subscribe to hear more from Javi Diaz and Gabriel Fairman every Tuesday and Thursday wherever podcasts are found! 

You can learn more about Florian Faes and Slator at: 

https://slator.com/ 

Join us at the Slator London Conference on May 23, 2024: 

https://slator.com/event/slatorcon-london-2024/

Podcast powered by Bureau Works, a cloud localization platform that makes complex translation tasks simple and predictable.

www.bureauworks.com

Follow us on YouTube and X @bureau_works for more and don't miss the latest live sessions and offers on LinkedIn:

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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? 

These questions are the base of today’s episode of #MergingMinds, where Professor Lisa Meeden speaks with our host Gabriel Fairman. This episode is deeply philosophical, lightly technical, and a whole lot of fun. 

They discuss: 

- How the syntactical capabilities of #LLMs emulate semantic understanding 

- What happens when words are only connected to each other 

- The challenge of truth in Large Language Models 

- Golfers, sheep and the challenge of ambiguity 

- “Synthetic Texts” and “Stochastic Parrots” 

- Grading students in the age of #ChatGPT 

- Robotics as the path to general #AI 

- The Symbol Grounding Problem 

- “Nutrition labels” for data sets 

- Constraints and lateral moves 

- Watermarks for AI creations 

- AI Springs and Winters 

And more! 

Click play to hear Lisa and Gabriel discuss! 

Lisa Meeden is a professor of Computer Science at Swarthmore College who also participates in the interdisciplinary program of Cognitive Science. Her research focuses on developmental robotics and, she is part of a team that developed AITK: An artificial intelligence toolkit that includes open-source Python tools and computational essays for exploring and understanding Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Science, Machine Learning, and Robotics. 

You can learn more about Lisa Meeden's work here: 

The syllabus for the new responsible AI course is available here: 

https://www.cs.swarthmore.edu/~meeden/phil27/s24/ 

AITK is freely available via github: 

https://github.com/ArtificialIntelligenceToolkit/aitk 

A description of the #ResponsibleAI curriculum development project is here: 

https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/education-programs/faculty-programs/responsible-artificial-intelligence-undergraduate-curriculum-design-project/ 

Don't forget to leave a review and subscribe to Merging Minds Podcast powered by Bureau Works for more thought-provoking podcast episodes.

Podcast powered by Bureau Works, a cloud localization platform that makes complex translation tasks simple and predictable.

www.bureauworks.com

Follow us on YouTube and X @bureau_works for more and don't miss the latest live sessions and offers on LinkedIn:

www.linkedin.com/company/bureau-works/