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Replying to my own comment instead of making said comment even longer:

I hope that, for all the problems ChatGPT and co. is introducing to the world, it might sufficiently grease the wheels of translation to make communication between different countries' scientists and scholars much easier. Imagine if every scientific paper could just be auto-translated, even if imperfectly, well-enough to be easy to read and reasonably understandable, at least enough to indicate where someone might want to dig further.

Granted, this speculation ignores the problem that there are already FAR more scientific articles than any scientist can read even if they look exclusively at those published in their own language. And the replication crisis is still a thing. But still? It would make it easier to find what you're looking for if you're searching for studies on some niche topic. And easy translation might at least make the top-tier, most well-respected scientific journals of other countries more accessible and more widely read. Although perhaps with the handful of expensive top-tier journals I suppose there might already be human-provided translations for those, I don't actually know.

/jesus I am fucking rambling today. Ah well :)

Edit: ditto for history. Easier historical collaboration between countries would be invaluable. Especially with the number of times I've seen an article like "ancient ruins discovered in the Amazon!" where the 'discovery' turns out to actually have been a really popular spot with the locals for years, and it's just that the information that it existed never traveled far enough to reach archeologists. Which touches also on the issue of archeology as it exists, with primarily white and western archeologists traveling to other countries to excavate and study and often abscond with their artifacts, being oftentimes part and parcel of the colonial project, but this comment is long enough.