Using AI for Good: AI and Translation

G20 Interfaith Forum (IF20) and the International Academy of Multicultural Cooperation (IAMC) want to focus on a positive aspect of AI: AI and Translation.

ALPINE, UT, UNITED STATES, June 22, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Artificial intelligence (AI) is discussed openly and often in the media, but the focus is usually on the negative applications of AI. G20 Interfaith Forum (IF20) and the International Academy of Multicultural Cooperation (IAMC) want to focus on a positive aspect: AI Translation, specifically for low-resource languages, in their upcoming webinar.

AI is transforming translation by making it faster, more accessible, and capable of handling dozens of languages that previously lacked digital tools. These systems can bridge cultural and linguistic gaps, helping people learn, collaborate, and share ideas across borders. At the same time, AI translation still struggles with nuance, tone, and culturally embedded meaning, reminding us that human judgment remains essential. When used thoughtfully, AI becomes a powerful partner in expanding understanding while preserving the richness of human language.

Professor Stephen D. Richardson is working on low-resource languages in Africa to encourage the communication and preservation of tribal languages. Out of the over 7,000 living languages, only a small fraction has enough digital resources to support AI translation systems. This limits the content available in these languages and limits the speakers of these languages access vital information to be successful in the modern AI world.

In preparation for the webinar, Professor Richardson remarked: “The technology in today’s AI models has been used for a decade to translate languages. However, while these models currently provide useful text and speech capabilities for a few dozen of the world’s most commonly spoken languages, they do not have such capabilities for the remaining thousands of languages. Several hundreds of these languages have over a million speakers and are not supported at all by today’s AI models. Additionally, about half of all the world’s languages are only spoken, with no standard written form. The ability to recognize, generate, and translate written, spoken, and signed languages is one of the great opportunities for AI to break down communication barriers, provide services and technology to underserved communities, and bring together the people of the world as never before.”

The webinar, “AI and Translation,” is the second in the series of webinars on “AI and Faith.” In this webinar, a panel of computational linguistic experts will discuss their AI and translation projects and answer questions from the people who attend the webinar. This public webinar will be hosted by IF20 and IAMC on Thursday, June 25, at 9 AM PST/10 AM MST/11 AM EST/12 PM EST.

Register for the free webinar at: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_oSp0FMD8Rfm5GfznAWutrg#/registration

Speakers will include:
• Marianna Richardson (moderator) is the Director of Communications for G20 Interfaith Forum. She has been writing the white paper on AI and Faith which will be distributed at the G20 Interfaith Forum on October 15-17 in Salt Lake City, Utah and presented to G20 Summit leaders before the G20 Summit in December 2026. She has a JD, EdD, and MBA and is concerned about AI’s use in law, education, and business.

• Steve Richardson is a Professor of Computer Science at Brigham Young University and the founder of the MATRIX Lab. His research focus is on machine translation (now referred to as AI translation) of both speech and text for thousands of the world’s low-resource languages. He has recently served as president and councilor of the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas. Steve has been involved in machine translation R&D for over five decades. His prior experiences include: manager of Machine Translation and Translation Systems at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, partner researcher and manager of the Machine Translation Group at Microsoft Research, senior programmer at the IBM Watson Research Center and ASD Bethesda lab, and researcher at BYU’s Translation Sciences Institute.

• Charles Cranney is a writer/editor, IT admin, film producer/editor, Russian speaker, singer, and more, Charles Cranney loves to combine disparate elements to advance great causes, including the BYU Speeches translation initiative. He enjoys mentoring his diverse, talented student teams of translators, developers, film editors, composers, and intelligent search specialists. From 2007–2010, he served as the mission leader for the Russia Moscow Mission of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Involved in civic causes, he served as board chair of Utah Valley Refugees and treasurer of the More Good Foundation. Currently, Charles is the senior manager of digital media at BYU Brand & Creative. He has been there for nearly 46 years, starting out with a typewriter as his tool of choice and now engaging with BYU’s vast audiences in the digital domain.

• Ammon Shurtz is a Computer Science PhD student at Brigham Young University, where he serves as the Lead Research Assistant at the MATRIX Lab. His research focuses on AI translation and low-resource natural language processing, working to build AI systems that serve language communities often overlooked by mainstream AI development, such as those in Southeast Asia. His own family heritage includes Cambodian ancestry, and he is fluent in the Khmer language. He holds both a B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science from BYU and has authored several publications across leading conferences on AI and Computational Linguistics.

About the G20 Interfaith Forum

The G20 Interfaith Forum seeks global solutions by collaborating with religious thought leaders and political representatives to help shape the overall G20 agenda. It draws on the vital roles that religious institutions and beliefs play in world affairs, reflecting a rich diversity of institutions, ideas, and values. Through its extensive network of networks, it helps prioritize key global policy goals and point toward practical means of implementation at every level of society.

For more information, please visit www.g20interfaith.org.

Marianna E Richardson
G20 Interfaith Forum
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