Synchronicity

I was born in Art and raised in Technology. Artlessly, both words have the same stem ‘τ?χν’ in Greek (τ?χν-η=art, τεχν-ολογ?α=technology). L’art pour l’art, tools incarnate technology inspired by nature to simulate nature. 

From my father, I got immersed in the mathematical beauty of everyday life as expressed in art, painting, sculpture, architecture, linear algebra, music, poetry, cosmology, art de table, savoir vivre, nature, order. Under unconditional and responsible freedom, my brother and I had the right to vote as soon as we had started speaking. My mother was trying to keep us on earth by learning us, as a jurist, to be on track under a tight schedule for our everyday tasks and to be fair: no minute to wait, creation happens in urgency. From my godparents I received a paperback Larousse illustrated dictionary as a wish when I was 5.

All those primary ingredients transformed me into a little observer developing an intuition that brought me to interact with people and machines very young. I remember driving everybody crazy because I could not explain how I had configured a universal remote control in 2 seconds. No doubt about it, I was in love with mathematics, words and automation. I was also perceiving people’s thoughts; a disagreement with my father on an algebraic equation solution when I was 14 gave me the first sign of looking forward to continuing mathematics elsewhere. To make the story short this “elsewhere” was discovered while binding the translation studies in Strasbourg as an Erasmus Greek student with the history of Computer Science. I remember using PCPaint in 1989 to write my Christmas wishes and printing them using a dot matrix printer. The needles noise was unbearable for my peers who were staring eyes wide open at 100 cards written in pixels. I wanted to see how pixels were translated into letters like in the paintings; Now I know I understood a lot of things unconsciously that day.

Wittgenstein suggests that language is a technology, and that the use of tools is also part of language-games and part of a form of life. In other words, we can turn the metaphor around: the use of tools resembles the use of words.

Working on my Master in Linguistics at Aristotle University transferred me to Paris and to Transformational Grammar as actualized by Maurice Gross in his Lexicon-Grammar theory. Without realizing it, in 1992 all the teams from different languages and cultures have been sewing neural laces: spotting the vectors under a -/+ cell-declared clauses 0/1 acceptability, factorized through transformations between structures and languages. For my PhD thesis Maurice chose the nominalization of adjectives in Greek compared to French.

And the road continues the way Alekos Fassianos painted Ulysses’s journey back to Ithaca. A painting I saw once arrived in Paris in 1992 and find back again while entering into SYSTRAN CEO’s office 8 years later in 2000. A journey that lasted 20 years surrounded by colleagues and friends solid to any form of deviation. 

I had been selected to join the team to describe linguistically the French <>Greek transfer rules applied to Machine Translation. I learnt how research meets industry. Will never forget when finite state automata applied to compounds translation as annexed in my Master in 1993 helped me to discover in practice the limits of their application in industrialisation in 2002. Since, holding different positions to build and share, having as objective to assist and educate on technology adoption for multilingual communication automation, I went beyond my academic background and met again the fascination of talking to a machine. But not only. By rendering technology accessible to everybody through tools via natural language, allowing everybody and everything to talk and interact with a translation robot, I met and worked with fantastic people in different fields and countries, belonging to different cultures and companies, having different dreams, sharing experiences, learning and working together as partners in a joint enthusiasm during 20 years. Teachable moments ! Thanks to all my peers and amongst all to the third-party partners worldwide for your trust.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Open Source rendered Technology a commodity. It is a fact. The uncertainty raised around AI too. Now it’s time to set convertors, adaptors, dashboards, middleware, develop workforce and reskill certified agents, experts, partners to relay with universal devices as tools for safety and security under the human eye of supervisors, mediators, auditors, operators, proof-readers; acting as real-time compliance liability validators, data traffic regulators and AI controllers for responsibility, equitability, traceability, reliability, governability.

Define and reposition the Human Factor in Technology-as-Sustainable-Commodity preserving cultures and ethics from any form of automation bias before any conclusion and decision is the next challenge. And a new wonderful story starts.

References

Jung, Carl (1972). Synchronicity – An Acausal Connecting Principle. Routledge and Kegan Paul. ISBN 978-0-7100-7397-6. Also included in his Collected Works volume 8.

Wittgenstein, L. (1969). On certainty (G. E. M. Anscombe, & von Wright, G. H. Eds., D. Paul, G. E. M. Anscombe, Trans.). Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Wittgenstein, L. (2009). Philosophische Untersuchungen. Philosophical investigations (P. M. S. Hacker, & J. Schulte Eds., G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker, & J. Schulte, Trans.). Revised 4th edition. Chichester UK: Blackwell Publishing.