Watchdog says US weather alerts are getting lost in translation
GAO urges NWS to firm up its AI language plans as policy shifts slow multilingual warnings
US spending watchdogs have called on the National Weather Service (NWS) to deliver an updated plan for its AI language translation project to reduce the risk posed by extreme weather events to people not proficient in English.
The call from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) comes as vast swathes of the US are pinned down by a winter storm that has already claimed lives.
But the NWS AI translation effort has been caught between a drive to reach as many people as possible, administration changes, and a White House Executive order to cement the role of English as the country’s official language.
The GAO report [PDF] noted that 26 million people in the US have “limited ability to read, speak, write, or understand English.” Two-thirds of people with limited English speak Spanish, while other major languages include Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, and Tagalog. French rounds out the top ten.
Related Knowledge Center: Information integrity
In an increasingly fractured media landscape, truth has been a casualty in the public discussion. Coverage has been warped by the business needs of struggling news organizations, and a significant segment of the public relies on bad-faith outlets that are little more than propagandists. While fact-checking has become routine, some organizations are exploring other ways to combat the trends. And misinformation spewed by AI-driven chatbots has become more of a feature than simply a bug.
Fact-checking and its detractors
Related Knowledge Center: Artificial intelligence
On top of a failing business model, newsrooms must navigate the powerful — and not fully reliable — new capabilities of artificial intelligence and the deployment of large language models.
State of the business model | Copyright and intellectual property