A Survey-Based Analysis About Consequential Risk of Errors and Ethical Complexities in the Use of AI-Powered Machine Translation in High-Stakes Situations

The availability of AI tools in recent years has led to increased use of automatic AI-powered machine translation (AI-MT) in various sectors. While AI-MT might be useful to support language diversity and enhance cross-lingual information access, the use of AI-MT involves consequential risk of errors and serious ethical issues, particularly when they are used in high-stakes situations such as government public services that matters to the rights, benefits and well-being of the public. Through analysis based on a survey about consequences in the use of AI-MT in government public services, this article reveals the hidden risk of errors and ethical complexities in using AI-MT, which have been overlooked by the non-professional users and the public. Through reflections on the status quo and by drawing upon relevant discussions, the article discusses the ethical issues in the use of AI-MT and proposed tentative principles for the formulation of guidelines on proper, responsible and ethical use of AI-MT.