Opinion Column / Are these the best hearing aids ever?

We live in a world of headphones. On the street, on the TransMilenio, on the Simón Bolívar subway, everyone has their headphones on. Whether they're from Apple, Sony, Samsung, or Huawei, it doesn't matter; they're a product almost as popular as the smartphone. Although I'd never paid much attention to their development, I came across a review in The New York Times about the AirPods Pro 3 that left me stunned.

“This week I saw an old friend, and he caught me up on what he’d been doing over the summer. He and his girlfriend had been visiting family in Arizona. His niece dragged him to a screening of Lilo and Stitch. He was hard at work at a new startup. He told me all this in Spanish, a language I’ve never learned, but I understood every word,” wrote Brian X. Chen. “How so?” was the first question I asked myself.

“I understood because I was using the new Apple earbuds that hit stores this Friday. The $250 AirPods Pro 3 use artificial intelligence to perform real-time translations, their most important feature,” Chen continued. I had to read the article twice to grasp the magnitude of the news. Earbuds that translate simultaneously in real time? No way!

Beyond the innovations it brings—a more aerodynamic design, better noise cancellation, longer battery life, and a few other things—real-time translation? The New York Times journalist was as stunned as I was. Next Friday, AirPods will be on sale, and that's probably all anyone will talk about. How good will the translation be? In what languages ​​will it be available? What will happen to the translation profession? What impact will this have on the globalized corporate world?

The other day, sitting with my sister, we were talking about how quickly everything is changing, about the complex world we're living in, and how challenging it will be for the younger generations. Children who today dream of pursuing certain careers are at the mercy of artificial intelligence. For those who want to study architecture, law, social communication, and many other fields, who can guarantee that these fields have a future?

I confess it's been a while since I've been so surprised by tech news like this. Sure, incredible products like ChatGPT, smart glasses, and robotic vacuum cleaners have come out in recent years, but I think the AirPods Pro 3 are going to mark a turning point not only in the world of headphones, but also in how we interact with people of other languages ​​and cultures.

These headphones will soon be arriving in Colombia and will cost between one and one and a half million pesos. Those who have the previous version will be able to access the translation by updating the software, saving themselves a considerable investment. Some experts recommend this.

And how do you activate it? “AirPods users simply make a gesture to activate the digital interpreter. About a second after someone speaks, the translation is played in the user's preferred language through the earbuds,” notes the Times columnist. The product supports English, French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish.

Doing a little more research on the subject, I discovered that both Google and Samsung have headphones with this same technology, but I don't think they presented it as something revolutionary, so perhaps I'm late to this. However, it's worth noting that Apple continues to be very bold in its launches and manages to captivate the public.

So I'll wait for the hearing aids to arrive in Colombia to buy them, try them out, and tell you if they're worth it and if they're the best ones available so far.