[GOAL] Why translating all scholarly knowledge for non-specialists using AI is complicated

[Victor Venema]

To also add some positive feedback from researchers: you are fully 
welcome to translate my research into humanly readable text. It would 
have to be enormously badly made before people would confuse a readable 
text with a scientific article and I have no fears that people would 
think a scientist would have written the readable version. I would see 
the situation similar to a translation in another language. 
Non-problematic and useful.

 From my side there are no problems with using wikipedia. There have 
been several studies showing that Wikipedia is as accurate as 
traditional encyclopaedias. I mostly wrote the Wiki page pertaining my 
field of study; I think it is reasonably good.

I have installed an add-on for my browser where I can select a word and 
directly open Wikipedia on that term. Very useful. Similarly it may be 
useful to make your translation engine as independent of the search 
engine as possible, so that it can also be used in other contexts.

The features you describe can also be useful for scientists reading 
scientific articles, especially when they are not native speakers or 
people doing interdisciplinary work. Then showing simpler terms and 
pictures would also be very helpful. So the translation engine could 
also be a good add-on for a browser or a PDF reader.

My main worry would be that the problem will not reach its societal 
aims. Already now there is more information on vaccinations and climate 
change in readable language on the net than any person will ever read.

People chose not to read it because they do not want to change their 
opinion, especially when it gets them into conflict with their social 
peers. The AI translated articles may be better readable than the 
original scientific articles, but would still be horrible scientific 
articles. I would expect even less people to read them.

Transparency done right can help the scientific community. But I am more 
sceptical that it can bridge the gap between science and the public. The 
BBC Reith lecture on trust makes a strong case, imho, that transparency 
does not reduce, but actually fuels, a culture of suspicion.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2002/lecture1.shtml

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Victor Venema
Chair WMO TT-HOM & ISTI-POST

WMO, Commission for Climatology, Task Team on Homogenization
http://tinyurl.com/TT-HOM
ISTI Parallel Observations Science Team
http://tinyurl.com/ISTI-POST
Grassroots scientific publishing
http://grassrootspublishing.wordpress.com/

Meteorological Institute
University of Bonn
Auf dem Huegel 20
53121 Bonn
Germany

E-mail: Victor.Venema at uni-bonn.de
http://www2.meteo.uni-bonn.de/victor
http://variable-variability.blogspot.com
Twitter: @variabilityblog
Tel: +49 (0)228 73 5185
Fax: +49 (0)228 73 5188

There is no need to answer my mails in your free time.
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