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Launch HN: Issen (YC F24) – Personal AI language tutor

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Re: Launch HN: Issen (YC F24) – Personal AI language tutor

#271

Post by M4R5H4LL »

deanc wrote: post #94
M4R5H4LL wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not finish, publish it to the store and get income if it was that straightforward? There's a long way to go between a toy application to demonstrate a product, and something on shelves actually selling. In other words, you can most often quickly tackle the concept or trivial parts of an app, but it's much harder to get a real product out, even if the implementation looks straightforward on surface.

That's exactly my point. This is at best a toy application driven by a prompt that many people will be able to extract and recreate. Putting the pieces together is easy and letting someone talk to an AI is not a particularly difficult problem. Creating magic and making people come back to learn the language is entirely different and I don't see anything magical here.

I think you're missing the point entirely. Yes, it's easy to reproduce 5% of the effort. But it doesn't make sense to call the whole 100% of the effort a toy application. Given market pressure, and if it was the case, we'd be flooded with applications like that. Being the master of 5% of the effort doesn't amount to much, and dismissing the other 95% as a toy when it requires a lot more work and as much expertise throughout doesn't make much sense. Drawing an airplane doesn't make it fly.

Re: Launch HN: Issen (YC F24) – Personal AI language tutor

#272

Post by csa »

0. Why is the linked video gated behind a login after the first play? This is unnecessary friction, imho.

1. In some of the comments, you say that this app is aimed at “b1 and higher”. That’s fine. But then the demo video shows content that ranges from A1 to possibly up to C1 (the interview, depending on the job). This seems to be cutting the baby in half. There’s a market for both of these types of tasks, but rarely does one person want both.

2. The TTS voice in French is not very good. ChatGPT default is smoother.

3. I will give your app a solid run through later, but in general, I think that having one-click options for threshold level tasks would be wildly popular. For B1, this might be a link to a news article on a current event and structured tasks and discussion about that article. For C1, it might include more tasks on nuance, inference, and cohesion (as a few examples). Many people don’t even realize that their speech lacks certain elements like cohesion throughout a text (written or spoken), so pointing those about as critical features of the threshold proficiency level would be super useful.

Re: Launch HN: Issen (YC F24) – Personal AI language tutor

#273

Post by simonbarker87 »

sotix wrote: post #207
anavat wrote: post #20

Thanks for working on this! Language learning really needs a breakthrough. Now, I tried the web app and chose to learn Greek as a beginner. And while I had better experience with your app than with ChatGPT or Gemini voice modes, I still got lost 5 minutes in because the AI tutor doesn't seem to have a plan for me, nor does it "see" my struggles. For example, after asking me about a hobby, it gives me a long sentence…

Language Transfer[0] will continue to be a better resource than any AI course. It’s very hard to beat a human that has put in time crafting a logical way to teach a language with the appropriate ramp ups. The Greek course on there is fantastic. And it’s free with zero ads. Best language learning tool I’ve ever used period. [0]: https://www.languagetransfer.org/

Agree, it was a game changer for me with Spanish. Learning a second language is just plain hard and LT is the closest to “a breakthrough” I think we will get, but it’s still hard and people don’t like that.

Re: Launch HN: Issen (YC F24) – Personal AI language tutor

#276

Post by strukturedkaos »

mariano54 wrote: post #185
vibranium wrote: post #182

How does this compare to Langua?

Langua is a nice app with more features than ISSEN. We focus on the voice chats, and I think our tech is better (intelligence, latency, realtime flow, voices, etc), especially for non english/spanish. We are aiming to create a long term companion/tutor that gets to know you more and more, and can create customized curriculums, lessons, etc.

Co-founder of Langua here.

Congratulations on the launch! Very cool take on combining the structure of a personalized curriculum with voice chats.

Langua has both a chat mode and a voice mode for uninterrupted conversations to give learners flexibility. Our initial approach has been less structured which is ideal for intermediate / advanced learners. We have had a lot of demand from beginners for more structured and personalized learning paths, so we're rolling those out as well.

Best of luck with with ISSEN.

Re: Launch HN: Issen (YC F24) – Personal AI language tutor

#278

Post by rickcarlino »

This is good so far! Most of my sentences were 10/10, but as an upper-intermediate learner, I am more concerns about the 7/10 sentences (and less worried about vocabulary).

I am only a few minutes in- is the app going to do anything about the "gaps" in my skills?

Great work! Very excited to see the future of language learning with LLMs

Re: Launch HN: Issen (YC F24) – Personal AI language tutor

#279

Post by SamDc73 »

ChadNauseam wrote: post #191
vjerancrnjak wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The app is optimized on the whole population, not on individual level. They even publish papers on global optimization. These kinds of learning apps are destined to become mediocre over time. The learning metric is so easy to capture, the learning content so easy to produce, yet no one has an individualized loop to make learning work well. For example, I'd press "Training" on Duolingo, and would get nowhere. Same les…

Duolingo is laughably inefficient. I have an app I've made for myself to learn french, and it's amazing how little effort is required to make something 10x better. (I completed the french Duolingo tree and learned essentially nothing so I feel justified in saying that.) If you're learning french, let me know and I'll add you to the app.

The real question: the 10x, can you mainstream it ? Or is it only 10x better per your preference ?

Btw: if the app is available, I would love to take a look!

Re: Launch HN: Issen (YC F24) – Personal AI language tutor

#280

Post by zelphirkalt »

Hi! Not sure you are still reading this, but gonna write feedback here.

I tried the trial and it doesn't work for me. Even though I allowed it to access my mic, it never picks up my voice input. I am on Librewolf. It is also a little bit unclear in the trial, when one is supposed to speak, if one is using the app the first time. The generated voice speaks, and then there is no visual indication of when it is ones turn to speak. Of course one can infer it from the things that the generated voice says, but this made me feel unsure, whether everything is working. But yeah, I cannot reply to the AI generated voice, because it doesn't pick up my input, even after reloading several times. I noticed, that on Librewolf the app doesn't recognize the mic and speakers properly.

On Chromium it seems to work.

I think some work is needed to get everything working cross browser.

I got some other actual usage issues:

- When speaking I also have pauses, but the pauses are then mis-recognized as me having finished my phrase, and then the AI already answers, which is of course annoying and counterproductive. A human would realize, that I am not done speaking and with a little bit of common sense wait a bit longer before speaking. At other times it somehow doesn't get, that I am already done speaking. This happened to me, when I replied only in one word.

- Sometimes it recognizes words completely wrong. (I tried Mandarin.) For example I said "柏林" and it understood some random characters, that did not even sound anything like "bo2lin2".

- The AI sometimes uses quite long phrases and sometimes vocabulary I don't know. If I take too long time to look up characters or reply, then the call might time out.

- Sometimes the AI really butchers the pronunciation of Mandarin.

- Sometimes there are pauses between parts of phrases in the AI output. When I start answering, and then the AI continues, changing the overall meaning or expectation of its message. Then I continue speaking after it is really done, but in my response both parts of what I said are included. The premature reply and the actual reply. This then changes my reply to be nonsensical, as if I did not understand what the AI said.

- The font size is really small for Mandarin, at least in my opinion. Especially in the tool tips when hovering over the words that I don't know.

- I actually didn't get to test learning anything, because the AI kept going on about 介绍 and 做计划 for learning and so on. When I finally said 让我们开始学习, the time was up and the test call closed. So I cannot actually say anything about how well one can learn some grammar with it.

That said, I am surprised, by how well it understands me most of the time. Sometimes though it reinterprets what I have said to fit more as a reply to the questions it asked, rather than taking simply what I have said.

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