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Show HN: Get conversational practice in over 20 languages by talking to an AI

talk.quazel.com

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Re: Show HN: Get conversational practice in over 20 languages by talking to an AI

#133

Post by IHLayman »

DonCullen wrote: post #130

As I’m completely deaf and don’t really use my voice, I communicate via ASL and via written English. This looks like a great tool but falls short in allowing the non-verbal to type to converse instead of speaking.

I think there’s a typing option: just click on the keyboard icon when entering a conversation?

Re: Show HN: Get conversational practice in over 20 languages by talking to an AI

#134

Post by telesilla »

bsaul wrote: post #124
amelius wrote: post #99

Meanwhile there are millions of people in poor countries who would love to have a conversation with you in French, Spanish, Portuguese, etc. over Skype.

Poor countries people with a laptop, a descent internet connection for streaming, available at any time of the day instantly, and ready to have a 2 minutes stupid conversation about anything random ? Not so sure ..

>Poor countries people with a laptop

With an android phone

>a descent internet connection for streaming

Lots of free public WiFi spots and cafes

>available at any time of the day instantly

Why instantly? Uber-style, whoever is around

>ready to have a 2 minutes stupid conversation about anything random

Script it

Re: Show HN: Get conversational practice in over 20 languages by talking to an AI

#137

Post by swyx »

panda_2134 wrote: post #126
swyx wrote: post #102

am rusty chinese speaker. randomly assigned to converse on Furniture & Locations. --- Quazel: 告诉我吧!你是如何安排你的家具的？ Me (in halting, broken chinese): 窗户旁边有一个沙发，中间是电视和桌子。我的工作就是在这里. Quazel: 所以你的沙发是面向窗户的？那真的很好。我敢打赌，这样你会得到很多自然光。沙发后面是什么呢？ translated Quazel: How do you arrange your furniture? Me: There is a couch next to the window, with a TV and table in the middle. This is where I work. Quazel: So you have your couch facing t…

Native Chinese speaker here. While Quazel has shown ability in understanding the context, its Chinese is not as authentic as that of a real teacher. Grammatically correct, but sounds weird. (for example, the phrase "I bet" is rarely used in Chinese) Maybe the weirdness is an innate characteristic of machine translation, so I'm not being too harsh here. But IMO it cannot take the place of a human teacher (at least now…

yea i think there's some unnecessary english intermediary layer here. starting a sentence with 所以 for "So" was a telltale sign to me as well. i suspect it goes chinese prompt -> english prompt -> english response -> chinese response rather than the more direct chinese prompt -> chinese response which would eliminate those translated englishisms.

but i gotta say as someone who doesnt like people waiting for me to come up with words, this beats a human teacher for the basic activation of neural pathways for vocab

Re: Show HN: Get conversational practice in over 20 languages by talking to an AI

#138

Post by IHLayman »

amelius wrote: post #99

Meanwhile there are millions of people in poor countries who would love to have a conversation with you in French, Spanish, Portuguese, etc. over Skype.

There’s also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italki. But I actually have shied away from it, mainly because I get nervous talking in front of a live person who will be judging my capability as I talk. I much prefer the idea of a non-feeling ML algorithm talking back at me, even if it makes GPT-3 like gibberish mistakes.

Re: Show HN: Get conversational practice in over 20 languages by talking to an AI

#139

Post by wongarsu »

fho wrote: post #121
arriu wrote: post #90

First, I’d like to say I really love this product. Thanks for making this. Second, where are the companies that are doing this type of thing for NPC dialogue in games. Imagine playing Mass Effect or Skyrim but where you get to ask whatever and the NPC responds with something that fits within the space of possible answers based on the prompt that defined their existence.

From what I read (on /r/gamedesign, /r/proceduralgeneration and Gamasutra) it's about control. The AAA studies leave nothing to chance when it is about the game play. Once "AI" speech comes to a level where the NPC will only answer with pre-sanctioned content they might jump onto the band wagon ... but seeing that it is very much possible to generate porn with "censored" stable diffusion ... we won't see "free" AIs i…

"AI" with pre-sanctioned content just sounds like Eliza-like chatbots [1] (a couple thousand pairs of regex-match to fitting answer). Those actually work great to create the impression of a conversation.

I think those even were used in a couple games ages ago. But they are not very good at steering the player and keeping him on track, which is how dialog systems are usually used in game design. They might be useful in a truly open world where the player discovers the story themselves (maybe like Fallout 1/2), but the AAA gaming industry has largely abandoned that idea in favor of "linear scripted stories in an open world".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA

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