Peer learning: reflections from an auditorium full of association leaders
Last week I spent two days at the Lagoa Congress Centre taking part in the Associations World Congress, a gathering of association leaders from across the world. The theme was artificial intelligence. As the chief executive of a professional body representing translators and interpreters, this was a useful opportunity to talk to other professionals about how they, and their members, are responding to this constantly evolving technology.
ITI has been navigating the complex relationship between human expertise and AI-enabled capabilities for longer than most. The translation and interpreting profession was among the first to feel the commercial impact of ready access to large language models, and our members have been living with the consequences – in their workloads, their rates and their professional identity – for several years now. Coming into a conversation about AI with peers from other sectors, I was struck by how much of what we have become familiar with is only now arriving on other people's agendas.
As expected, many speakers were enthusiastic about the perceived opportunities and I heard about some clever and practical AI-based tools that organisations have developed to streamline their administrative processes and improve their data gathering and analysis. But there was a note of caution too. George Walkley, a strategy consultant working with organisations in the publishing, media and technology sectors, referenced the risks of using large language models for translation tasks and made a point that ITI has been making for some time: clients don't know what they don't know. If a client cannot evaluate the output, they cannot be confident about whether it is accurate or appropriate. He also noted that if something goes wrong, the question of who is responsible matters enormously. An AI agent is not liable for its errors; a professional translator or interpreter is.
Accountability is no small thing. It is the foundation on which trust in language services is built, and it is one of the clearest arguments for professional standards in a market that is changing fast. It is something that we need to talk about more, alongside the importance of professional judgement and the application of professional ethics.
The value of a skilled language professional is not simply that they produce a text. It is that they use their professional judgement – their understanding of what words do, not just what they mean – to make considered choices. They care about the way that language works at a deep level: how it responds to nuance and cultural context, and why getting it right matters in terms of risk and consequence. They know when precision is non-negotiable and when tone matters as much as content. ITI members are also bound by our Code of Professional Conduct, which means they are answerable for the quality of their work in a way that no automated system can be. In a market where language technology has become abundant and cheap, we need to help clients and stakeholders understand the value of accountability.
And maybe we can take comfort in the knowledge that these questions are live across every professional sector, not just ours. Associations everywhere are trying to work out what their members need in a world where technology is changing the nature of professional work. The case for human expertise and the application of critical judgement is not unique to translation and interpreting – it is something we share with professional bodies across medicine, law, engineering and beyond. This offers good reason to keep working alongside colleagues in the AAE and other networks to make the case, not just to our members, but to the organisations and individuals who rely on their work.