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President, CEO LanguageLine Solutions
Having spent two decades with LanguageLine before stepping into a five-year role at our sister company, I returned in 2024 to find an industry where cycles of innovation, once spanning years, now turn with breathtaking speed. This shift is driven by technological advances that challenge every corner of our field.
We are at an inflection point. The decisions we make this year will echo for generations, shaping the trajectory of our industry and society. It is a sobering responsibility—one we must navigate with an unwavering ethical commitment.
Balancing Innovation with Purpose
Technology, particularly AI and machine learning, has revolutionized how we work. These tools allow us to deliver services more efficiently, cost-effectively, and at unprecedented scale. Yet, we must remain vigilant. The pursuit of progress should never come at the expense of accuracy, cultural sensitivity, or fairness. These are the pillars of trust on which our industry is built.
The challenge before us is not whether we can move fast (technology ensures that we will), but whether we can do so thoughtfully. Will we honor the humanity at the heart of our work? Will we remain an ethical industry?
The Slippery Slope of Compromise
Temptations will arise along the way. The lure of short-term gains has the potential to push us to compromise, inch by inch: a concession on privacy here, a slight erosion of quality there. But those inches add up. If we sacrifice too much of our value system, the reflections we write in 2025 will reveal an industry that is far less trusted and much more vulnerable.
Our industry thrives today not because we have pursued every opportunity at any cost, but because we have held firm to what matters: serving people with integrity, fostering understanding, and enabling connections in essential moments of need.
The soul of our industry must not be for sale: not now, not ever. By remaining true to our principles, we can chart a path forward that is both innovative and ethical, ensuring our impact endures for decades to come.
The world will be watching.
In recent years, we’ve seen a wave of new competitors in our industry that promise more for less. Some rely on linguists who are paid below sustainable rates. Others use AI trained on generic data with no oversight from professionals. These approaches are marketed as efficient. In practice, they introduce real risk.
Poorly trained or overextended linguists increase the chance of miscommunication. AI systems that lack cultural context or domain knowledge introduce errors that no software update can fix.
There is no margin for error in what we do, yet I’m concerned that the price pressure from these new business models threatens to pull our entire industry into a race to the bottom.
"Is your interpretation responsibly sourced?" I think we can all agree that this question should matter as much in our industry as it does for food, clothing, and building materials.
As language service providers, we have an opportunity to help clients understand the production process behind their language access, the people involved, and whether it meets their required standards.
Responsible sourcing means working with qualified professionals, investing in their training and well-being, and ensuring they have the tools to deliver consistent quality. It means building AI that is transparent, linguistically rigorous, and guided by human expertise at every step.
This moment is a test of what our industry values. It’s a test of our “why.”
We should all be thrilled about the potential for AI to extend our mission. It can take us further, faster toward a world in which language and cultural barriers no longer exist.
This should be – and can be – a race to the top. AI represents a tremendous opportunity if we harness it to elevate our industry’s standards rather than compromise them.