Google announced a new tool called SignGemma which they describe as “our most capable model for translating sign language into spoken text”
I absent mindedly shared this in the GR Slack group I hang out in and a friend encouraged me to dig a little deeper into learning about how this new tool is received within the deaf community. The interesting piece for me to hunt for was why this tool wouldn’t be well liked/received by some. Wouldn’t everyone want this amazing tool?
What I wanted to do
Go out and talk with a few people who are deaf. Unfortunately, my life is pretty time constrained.. (as you can probably tell from how frequently I write on this blog).
What I did instead
I scoured the Internet… turns out there are lots of people sharing opinions on this topic on Reddit and Facebook. So here I collect the reasons someone might view this release as negative.
Reaction 1: Fear it might take ASL translator jobs
This technically isn’t coming from the deaf people but translators are what I would consider within the larger community so I thought I’d incldue them.
Reaction 2: Why are we spending money to help hearing people?
We should be working to help deaf people understand speaking… not the other way around
Reaction 3: Sign Language to English… doesn’t make sense
Reaction 4: It’ll reduce vocabulary and simplify the language
Seems like the reaction here is the fear of cultural homogenization similar to what television/media has done with local cultures/language variants of English.
Reaction 5: It will give people an excuse not to learn sign language
Reaction 6: Hearing people may be less inclined to provide interpreters thinking this tool is “good enough”
What I also stumbled upon
This tool was actually designed by a deaf person (Sam Sepah) for a specific problem they felt they had!
Unfortunately… couldn’t spot a specific problem they were after. Just a vauge sort of “this will help everything” which is typical of AI stuff.
What I learned…
So… Looking back… my gut reaction of shock around “How could someone not be excited about this?” feels pretty silly… especially me being pretty active in the autism community.
There are a LOT of people in the deaf community. Any community is made up of individuals. Every individual is unique and different from the other people within their community.
We can take the “Once you’ve med one autistic person… you’ve met one autistic person” and flip it to:
Once you’ve met one deaf person… you’ve met one deaf person