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Vishal Victor - Writing 2

Robots in Human Society

As a kid have you ever wondered what the world would look like in 20 years? What it

would look like in 50 years? What about 100 years? I’m sure this thought has crossed the minds

of many people, and if it did, I’m sure many people have also considered the idea of robots

taking over for humans. Even 10 years ago, this could have seemed like nothing but a pipe

dream. However, with humans making large strides in the machine learning field, these

automated “robots” integrating themselves into parts of human society to increase efficiency and

assist humans is becoming a reality.

In my genre translation, my original article was a scholarly article about how machine

learning, or creating forms of artificial intelligence, is currently integrating itself into the medical

field and what challenges were faced in this process. I translated this into an introductory essay

for a TED Talk (Technology, Education, and Design). The context of the TED Talk genre

explains information on the specific topic that is being presented, usually including data and

personal experiences or struggles. The audience for TED Talks can be found on the TED website

when they mention that their “​goal is to inform and educate global audiences in an accessible

way.” ​More specifically, I wanted my introductory essay to target the public that is interested in

machine learning, but also have it simple enough to where the general public can also follow

what the TED Talk is about. ​I wanted to take the original article and change it into something

that would spread the concept and successes of machine learning to the public who are interested

in the topic. As I mentioned before, in addition to the general public, TED Talks are also targeted

towards those who can directly use the knowledge in their day to day life. In my case, this would

be computer science majors or those who work and use computer science everyday. Although
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machine learning and working with artificial intelligence might look scary at first, I wanted to

present it in a way that would be easily understandable to those who are new to machine learning

or wanted to start learning about it while still having all the necessary concepts of machine

learning necessary to explain the two technologies mentioned in the scholarly article. As

machine learning is a passion of mine, I wanted to share this passion with others in a format that

would not look too intimidating.

My original scholarly article, “New machine-learning technologies for computer-aided

diagnosis,” written by Charles J. Lynch and Conor Liston, mentions the struggles machine

learning technologies face when trying to be integrated into the medical field and how two

specific technologies overcame these challenges and are currently being used in the industry. ​The

article mentions the struggles machine learning technologies face when trying to be integrated

into the medical field. The purpose of the article is to show how two specific machine learning

technologies have overcome the challenges to be useful in the medical field and to explain how

these technologies are currently being used in the industry. The two successful technologies

mentioned in the article were ​a machine learning technology that decides whether CT (computed

tomography) images contain significant or alarming findings such as strokes or hemorrhages and

a technology the speakers mention is a form of identifying and diagnosing retinal diseases. As

mentioned in “Reading Games : Strategies for Reading Scholarly Sources” by Karen Rosenburg,

“the formula also changes depending on the flavor of study (physics, management, sociology,

English, etc.) and the venue” (213). I made the language much more understandable for the

general public, who is the targeted audience of TED Talks, which is essentially the formula

change that Rosenburg talks about in her article. Without doing this, the target audience of my

TED Talk genre would not be effectively reached. Just describing how these two technologies
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work with all the academic language in the scholarly article would end up confusing many

people and might even end up throwing them off from watching the TED Talk, so I simplified

the language as much as I could and also used explanations for academic terms that I could not

simplify.

When translating the original article into the new TED Talk genre, I had to incorporate

the stylistic and substantive conventions of the new genre while still maintaining the original

article’s purpose. This is essentially the end goal of my genre translation. I want to keep the

purpose of the scholarly article while still maintaining all the conventions of a TED Talk

introductory essay. The main conventions of a TED Talk introductory essay that I noticed

through reading several essays are ​the use of numbers and statistics, the essay being in paragraph

format, and questions marks. For my particular article, I decided to only add statistics where I

felt it would not confuse the reader in any way, such as sizes of datasets. I also formatted the

essay to be several paragraphs. In addition, a more subtle stylistic convention I noticed was the

use of anecdotes. I included an anecdote of the authors creating the second technology

mentioned in the original essay by writing the paragraph explaining it through the perspective of

the authors. I used pronouns such as “their'' to translate it into an anecdote, even though it was

not written as an anecdote in the original article. Another stylistic convention of the introductory

essays are questions targeted to the reader. I included these in my introduction and conclusion.

My introduction explained the topic of machine learning without revealing what it was, and I

included a question targeted to the writer about what they think the topic might be. This is the

overall topic of the essay, so phrasing it as a question to the reader made it seem like more of a

TED Talk introductory essay. Additionally, in my conclusion, I added a question about the future

that doesn’t have a set answer. This is often done in the TED Talk introductory essays I have
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read, and including it in my essay helped it seem like more of a conclusion to a TED Talk than

an academic article. Some of the substantive conventions of TED Talk introductory essays

include the problem(s) the speakers are trying to address, including solutions to the problem or

problems, personal experiences going through these challenges and how the possible solutions

were reached, and an overall larger theme that the TED Talk is connected to. I emphasized the

two main problems mentioned in the original article and for each specific technology, I

mentioned how the technologies overcame these challenges. This explanation of the problem and

solution was then connected to a larger theme of machine learning integrating itself into society

as a whole, rather than just in the medical field. I introduced this larger idea in my introductory

paragraph, and kept connecting the ideas, problems, and solutions from the article to the larger

theme throughout the genre translation. ​In the article “Genre In The Wild : Understanding Genre

Within Rhetorical (Eco)Systems,” by author Lisa Bickmore, she mentions that “another way to

think of these compositions is as predictable and recurring kinds of communication—in a word,

genres.​ ” Just like in machine learning, where the computer takes in data to find patterns that will

allow it to distinguish between images and eventually output a success/failure, genres also use

patterns. ​The combined use of these conventions, or patterns, in my genre translation allowed it

to appeal to a new audience while still maintaining the same purpose as the original article.

My main challenge in making this genre translation successful was trying to keep the

original purpose of the main article while making the introductory essay understandable to the

general public. There was a considerable amount of academic language throughout the essay that

would confuse the general public unless they had studied or are currently studying machine

learning. I got through this by simplifying as much of the academic language as I could into easy

to understand sentences and providing explanations for the terms I could not simplify. By doing
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this, I was able to create an introductory essay that the public could easily comprehend,

increasing the exposure of machine learning to the public eye or to people simply trying to learn

more about machine learning. Although I simplified the article so that the general public would

be able to understand it, those who are either interested in machine learning or those who work

with it on a daily basis can still learn from this introductory essay. From mentioning artificial

neural networks to training dataset and testing datasets, all the components of machine learning

are still included in the essay. It was challenging to include all of these elements to attract those

who are already knowledgeable on the subject while still appealing to those who are newer to

the subject or who know nothing about machine learning. By simplifying the concepts enough to

teach the general public while also having all the concepts the original article contained allowed

me to create an introductory essay for a TED Talk that would appeal to both the general public

and those who are more interested or involved in machine learning.

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Works Cited

Bickmore, Lisa. “Genre in the Wild: Understanding Genre Within Rhetorical (ECO)Systems.”

Open English @ SLCC, 1 Aug. 2016

Lynch, Charles J., and Conor Liston. “New Machine-Learning Technologies for

Computer-Aided Diagnosis.” ​Off-Campus Access: Login​, 3 Sept. 2018,

www-nature-com.proxy.library.ucsb.edu:9443/articles/s41591-018-0178-4.

Rosenberg, Karen. “Reading Games: Strategies for Reading Scholarly Sources.” In Lowe, C., &

Zemliansky, P. (Eds). ​Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing​ (Vol. 2). Parlor Press, 2011.

Genre Translation :

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EG0zIpCF48VnjPDcs5TzlCqohURkQHvi-iaPRlOdECI/ed

it?usp=sharing

Original Article :

https://www-nature-com.proxy.library.ucsb.edu:9443/articles/s41591-018-0178-4