Tools and trends - Part 1

Thank you to the 44 persons who participated in our first tools and trends session this fall. We had an interesting event discussing especially AI's role in technical communication. 

Maiken moderated the session and took us safely through the agenda:

1. Welcome and short introduction

2. Term Portal: Streamline your terminology management with term translation workflow and integrations - Marion Randelshofer, COO at WorldTranslation

3. Automate you information processes: How AI can supercharge your documentation - Dr. Jan Oevermann, CEO at plusmeta

4. Panel discussion and Q&A

Term Portal: Streamline your terminology management with term translation workflow and integrations, by Marion Randelshofer

Marion showed us a few features of Term Portal. It is World Translation’s browser-based terminology solution, where content writers and translators can view, propose and change terminology in a simple user interface. She showed how the same terminology database can be used during translation and in the review process with live visual layout, how the termbase is integrated into the machine translation platform, and how Term Portal can be used for a lean term translation workflow, all within the same system. She also talked about how AI affects the translation industry in general, and espcially about large language models, machine translation, processes and automation.

Automate your information processes: How AI can supercharge your documentation, by Jan Oevermann 

Jan took us through and interesting presentation about how modern applications require intelligent information with metadata. He told us that AI can help to automate the enrichment and structuring of content to be ready for more sophisticated uses of information. In his talk, he discussed and evaluated methods ranging from rule-based systems to large language models. He also gave us real-world examples of projects that demonstrated how AI can deliver value to documentation projects.

Panel discussion

Both Marion and Jan participated in the panel discussion together with Steen Magnussen. Besides being secretary in the tekom Danmark board, he also runs a company that helps other companies find the right language service providers to match their needs and processes.

The discussion took us into different topics that covered:

1. Humans in the loop and different AI models
2. Pittfals of using AI
   1. Security - Who owns the data and what happens to our input? (A participant shared this link to an article that helps shed some light on this)
   2. Expectation towards the new technology - Do we demand too much?
   3. Copyright - Do I accidentially steal something from others by using engines like chatGPT?
   4. Pricing models - Will prices explode with the increased use?
3. Will competitors steal our documentation to feed it to their AI engines as training material?
4. What will happen in the future?
   1. Growing AI demand from customers
   2. AI implementation in processes and products
5. Will AI help get rid of PDFs as a format?

We'll begin our next session with the last point about the PDFs and already now look forward to a fruitful discussion at the conference in September.

Thank you Marion, Jan and Steen for sharing your thoughts and expertise, we look forward to welcome you back again in the future.