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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

#321

Post by LouisSayers »

missedthecue wrote: post #293

This is an interesting tool. I did not encounter any awkward grammatical sentences that other posters did. But the conversation I had got really repetitive. This was my conversation (spanish). AI: So why are you in the park? Me: I'm here because I like to exercise AI: That's great! I like to exercise too! What is your favorite type of exercise? Me: I like to run AI: That's great! I like to run too! What is your favor…

It might be because the AI is lonely - they spend a lot of time asking others about themselves, but who's caring about the AI?

You never asked them about themselves, their interests or anything...

If it was a real person they probably would have said "have a nice day!" And left you in the park.

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

#322

Post by Gigachad »

adamsmith143 wrote: post #173
fho wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you slap an M rating on it why would that matter?

Because an NPC will inevitably be made to say something racist which will be screenshot and posted on Twitter.

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

#323

Post by Gigachad »

Tao3300 wrote: post #314
corytheboyd wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it were free text, sounds like a thing I would use once for the novelty then forget about, because it's not an entertaining gameplay feature. Maybe an AI could generate incidental dialog, things NPCs yell out in reaction to things around them, to keep it from always being from the same list of two or three reactions. Just my two cents. I want to play a well written and fun game, not a chat bot.

Talk to NPCs for hours about their boring lives thatching roofs and keeping shops, until they get weirded out by all the questions. Yeah, doesn't really sound fun.

These days games have been moving in the other direction by making them play out a lot like movies, very controlled and measured experiences that provide a consistent and coherent story.

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

#324

Post by godelski »

This seems really cool. Even though there are clearly some flaws, the most important thing for learning to speak a language is simply the act of speaking and listening.

There's some key points of advice I'd give:

- Allow multiple languages under an account. People that learn languages tend to learn more than one. I'd personally like to practice my Spanish AND Chinese.

- Forget the lessons (for now at least. You're jumping in too fast and even the basic lesson requires quite a large barrier to entry). Make an easy way to just get to the chat in a specific language. That's the greatest utility of the tool, make it shine.

- There's also some ease of use things like lack of pinyin/latinization for some languages. Or like not being able to delete your message when in the translation (and that pressing the record again appends instead of rewrites). But this all seems like it'll be worked out by dogfooding.

Great job though! I'm excited to use it and have already shared with a few friends.

As a (CV) ML researcher, I'm curious what backends you're using and your control flow.

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

#325

Post by jhardy54 »

englishrookie wrote: post #283
jhardy54 wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Translation or transliteration?

No transliteration: Dutch uses the Latin alphabet.

Thanks, I didn’t realize that I’ve been using that word incorrectly. I should have said ‘literal translation’.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literal_translation

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

#326

Post by monopoliessuck »

This is great. I encountered a few bugs, but overall this was just fun to use.

I particularly liked getting this prompt a few volleys in. The AI decided she was done with speaking Spanish... except, not really.

> her (translated): Wow, I'm sorry, I don't understand Spanish that well. Do you mind if we speak in English?

> me (translated): No that's fine, let's speak in English please.

> her: Me llamo Sarah y soy de Estados Unidos. Tengo dos gatos a los que quiero mucho. En mi tiempo libre, me gusta leer y hacer senderismo. ¿Y tú?

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

#328

Post by jhardy54 »

grumpopotamus wrote: post #320
englishrookie wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No transliteration: Dutch uses the Latin alphabet.

Maybe word for word translation is the phrase we're looking for? As opposed to an idiomatic translation. Transliteration means phonetically translating from one alphabet to another, in order to p reserve the pronunciation.

Exactly this — I thought that’s what “transliteration” meant, but I was wrong. I appreciate the pointer.

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

#329

Post by hhw3h »

phpisatrash wrote: post #2

It really looks cool. But, why it doesn't have English? Or meybe if it does have, why isn't showed first? People who use language learning apps are focused in learning English most of the time. Still those who speak fluently are trying to improve their speaking and listening. And the first language which appeared for me was Brazilian Portuguese which is my mother language. [Edit] I was trying the Brazilian Portuguese…

This would be great for English. So many people need help with their conversational or small talk skills. Would be great for them to be able to practice even if they are native speakers. For public speaking, office communication training, self confidence development, etc.

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

#330

Post by nmfisher »

andrepd wrote: post #9

With the current state of AI text generation, isn't this a recipe for disaster? By talking to a chatbot while learning a language you are liable to pick up whatever (vast) errors and mistakes the bot makes.

I don't want to say "recipe for disaster", but as someone working on a similar app, it's definitely a challenge. It's one of the reasons I stayed away from a pure ML/language modelling approach. It's really easy for models to get things wrong - for example, elsewhere in this thread there's a Chinese sentence about arranging furniture but the word "arrange" isn't really right (it's more "arrange" in the sense of "arranging a delivery", rather than "arranging a number of objects", and sounds like it's been auto-translated from English).

When I started I wanted to be sure that every single word/sentence was "correct" (i.e. a native speaker agreed that all the words/grammar were correct/natural in that context). LMs have improved since I started, but for me, that requirement still stands and ML approaches still need a heavy human touch IMO.

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