81–90 of 112 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly the level of quality we expect when the product idea starts out with "AI" and "scalable". And completely forgets (or doesn't bother think about) what beginning students actually need.
I learned for foreign languages and was obviously a beginner in each. Not sure what hating on 'AI' and 'scalable' (your word by the way, not mine) accomplishes.
Greetings! I really like your idea. I have been building a similar open source/non-commercial tool. I am essentially trying to build a solution to get me ready for a standardized Korean language exam. The format and UX of Giglish are extremely good, but I think there are a few places where you need to fine tune your prompts, at least for Korean language learning. I also wish there was a drill mode that is less open e…
Hey! Thanks for the feedback! > I think there are a few places where you need to fine tune your prompts, at least for Korean language learning Can you expand on this one, please? > I also wish there was a drill mode that is less open ended I have something similar to a drill mode in my previous product (to learn English) and people use it 1-3 hours a day. Want to incorporate it into Gliglish, just didn't get around t…
Indeed it is! Very much a work-in-progress though, whenever my work schedule has a moment to spare.
> I have something similar to a drill mode in my previous product (to learn English) and people use it 1-3 hours a day. Want to incorporate it into Gliglish, just didn't get around to it yet but you make me realize I shouldn't wait!
I look forward to trying it in the future. I'm a fan of tools that let me just "plug in" and immerse for a solid hour via short drills. I wish there was a GPT-enhanced tool like using Anki, but for vocab drills and speaking practice. This was my main motivation for working on KoalaSRS
> Can you expand on this one, please?
Absolutely! When I tried the bakery scenario, I used the Korean word for "bread" but it got misinterpreted as "bell". It's not solely a transcription error (my pronunciation could use a little touch up), but I'm curious if you're using OpenAI's Whisper? If so, implementing a dynamic/context-aware prompt might improve the accuracy, and even overlook minor pronunciation glitches. I've done some tinkering in this area during my own experiments and saw some promising improvements. I'm not sure if you're using Whisper or if you've tweaked your Whisper prompts based on context, but I thought I'd mention that experience to see if it helps you tweak things a bit.
Thanks for your reply. If you ever feel like diving deeper, don't hesitate to reach out. I absolutely love discussing language learning software. I've shared some of my thoughts on my blog and in the KoalaSRS README as well, so feel free to take a peek if you're curious!
On the positive side: the bot itself has excellent voice quality (it still sounds bot-like -- but people expect that) and makes very few pronunciation mistakes (I only noticed one). Its vocal recognition is, I would say ... not great, but good enough (it recognizes well enough if I say simple, standard things, but it easily confused if I use less common -- but also perfectly correct -- formulations). At least, vocal recognition as such is not its weakest spot.
You can ask it questions about fairly detailed topics and get reasonably correct answers most of the time (as with GPT, which I'm guessing is its backend). It can sometimes give you very nuanced feedback as to your diction and usage (it will notice when you're using a formulation that is correct but not standard, and give you a detailed explanation as to why).
However, what I don't like -- and what made me ultimately decide not to invest further time with the app at present:
(1) You can easily feel lost (in "Teacher" mode) because all it can do is answer questions -- it isn't guiding you anywhere, and you have to already know what questions to ask.
(2) Even so, I thought to myself -- "well I can see how a good Q+A bot can be useful -- let's see what we can do with it". And here's where I got most disappointed.
I told it I wanted to practice my pronunciation -- and first asked for it to come up with some sample sentences, and then thought of one of my own -- one of those sentences you would say to someone at the family dinner table to try to wow them with your language skills.
In both drills, I played a little trick on the poor bot -- I deliberately mispronounced the sentences, the way a stereotypical Ugly American would -- basically mangling every single syllable in some obvious way, hoping to get a long list of corrections from the bot.
And it totally failed at this task. It kept saying "You said that perfectly! Well done!" or some variant. When I knew for a fact that my pronunciation was an epic fail, and I would have greatly embarrassed myself at that family holiday dinner.
(3) But things got even weirder when I tried to tell the bot "Wait you're wrong, I actually made lots of mistakes." More than half the time it would get horribly confused, sometimes telling me -again- that I said that sentence perfectly, sometimes "correcting" its own sentence.
So it's quite scatterbrained (just like GPT-4 is, when you try to make it backtrack and acknowledge some kind of mistake). It also misunderstands questions about grammar if I ask it to explain something it just said, or which I said in a sentence previously.
Bottom line -- it's a very mixed bag. Partially quite impressive -- but far too often, extremely frustrating to work with. Once one gets past the "wow!" aspect of working with a bot that seems well-spoken and (quantitatively) seems to have a lot of knowledge about grammar and usage -- the frustration arising from its scatterbrained-ness, and more fundamentally, just never knowing if I can really trust its answers takes over.
On the whole it just grinds my gears ... like pretty much any other chat bot I've attempted to try to get useful information out of.
That and again -- it isn't guiding you anywhere. If it can't reliably keep track of what it just said (or what I just said), it's definitely not going to be able to assess my progress, or tell me how to improve (beyond the random piece of generic advice it doles when it doesn't have anything better to say).
Of course it won't. It's just a transformer bot, after all. And the technology is categorically nowhere capable of doing that.
Hey, this is cool! Is it possible something more than the speed throttle for beginners? Could the AI use simpler language for beginners and more complex for advanced users?
I think this could bridge the gap for many people stuck at A level and trying to cross to actual communication, which requires lots of interaction so that the words and sentences start popping up.
On the other hand, at some point, my super limited Hungarian (of maybe 300 to 600 words?) was getting me praise just because I could use the little I knew without thinking.
”Practice, practice, practice!…”
So here's some more balanced feedback, if you will (playing with a language I know quite well already): On the positive side: the bot itself has excellent voice quality (it still sounds bot-like -- but people expect that) and makes very few pronunciation mistakes (I only noticed one). Its vocal recognition is, I would say ... not great, but good enough (it recognizes well enough if I say simple, standard things, but…
(1) I'm self-directed in my learning and always knew what I wanted my teachers to do, but everyone's different. Definitely going to add more choice of content (and not just roleplay.) I have a very structured and successful program to learn English and will try to adapt what works well in it to Gliglish.
(2) You're right! The speech recognition and LLM layers are separate. I actually do have data about the quality of pronunciation, I'm just not using it yet. It's a matter of adding a layer to handle it. Basically, all the building blocks are here and I need to get them to play nicely together.
(3) It's the same issue as with ChatGPT on which it's built. Part of the progress will come from OpenAI or similar endeavors themselves, part from further checks on my end as in (2).
I just don't share your pessimistic view about the future of such tech though (well, if I did I probably wouldn't have started the whole thing! ) Once you put ChatGPT into a corner, there's usually no hope of it getting back on track. BUT with clear context and prompts on things it does well it's just incredibly useful! Again, is the glass half empty or half full?
As for this use case, there's tremendous value in being able to practice. Just talking to oneself in the mirror or journaling in a foreign language is already super productive and this is it… on steroids.
Nice work, Fabien! I recently released my own tool for language learners, bitextual[1]. I announced it on the language learning subreddit[2]. This kind of thing is allowed there, and it led to some useful feedback. [1] https://bitextual.net [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/
r/languagelearning/ does not currently accept anything relating to AI. Here's the messages I got:
Automatically:
> Thank you for posting on r/languagelearning. Due to their frequency, posts relating to AI and chat bots have been banned from the sub.
And from the mods:
> Hello--it does look good. Unfortunately, we currently are severely curbing chatbot posts.
Here is some feedback. I tried Spanish, but I don't speak it at all. The AI teacher starts speaking Spanish to me and I have no idea what is being said. Not sure how I can learn anything from this.
I'll also add voice and translations to the suggestions provided on every screen.
It's also a matter of learning style... I don't speak a word of Portuguese or Bosnian, but diving into those was a lot of fun! Language learning can be seen like a detective game and it's super exciting then.
In any case, will definitely try to accommodate more learning styles and personality types.
actual product: - i need it to ask me questions, and attempt to determine my skill level on it's own. i found myself asking (in french, which this keyboard has a terrible time recognizing) "what's the deal with pension reform in France", which is just my pathology at work: I'll gladly cook up great questions to get my interlocutors talking, but i need more prompts to get my speech synthesis and auditory processing systems running better (which another poster alluded to as well).
totally tangentially, my wife corrected my French while i was playing with this toy and got a loving chiding. god bless the attentionally and impulse-inhibitorially challenged :eyeroll: