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Duolingo Max, a learning experience powered by GPT-4

blog.duolingo.com

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Re: Duolingo Max, a learning experience powered by GPT-4

#151

Post by __d »

babyshake wrote: post #130
DrammBA wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's the big issue? This all seems pretty standard I would say this one feels more later stage capitalism than usual, all it's missing is some tiktok influesters hyping it up.

The real late stage capitalism move is Duolingo building a bank into their app.

C'mon, let's make lingots (the Duo reward system) into a cryptocurrency. Reimplement the service such that people doing language lessons are the proof of work, and miners (learners) get lingots as their reward.

Re: Duolingo Max, a learning experience powered by GPT-4

#152

Post by Balgair »

vhanda wrote: post #90
karaterobot wrote: post #62

Does it actually say how much Duolingo Max would cost? I do not see anything in that article or on their website. I don't have the app, maybe it's already live and pricing is available there. I deleted Duolingo years ago when it felt like I knew everything it had to teach me, but was still far from fluent in the language. I assume it's gotten better, and would consider trying this new feature.

It doesn't. Neither does the website. An article from Yahoo [0] says it's "$29.99 per month or $167.99 per year", but they don't link to a source. [0] - https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/duolingo-launches-subscrip...

Woah, a dollar a day. That's a lot to ask from an otherwise free app. 3x the current price of a paid version

Re: Duolingo Max, a learning experience powered by GPT-4

#153

Post by Pelayu »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #91
akhosravian wrote: post #66

Would love to use duolingo, but they have no interest in supporting iranian languages. I’ve never really seen a clear answer for why. They have about 200 million native speakers worldwide. Persian, Pashto, Kurdish are the largest.

Hmm, I guess what they're interested mostly is how many people are interested in learning Iranian languages. Not saying that the number is small, but I'd guess it's maybe too small for them to matter?

I don’t think this argument holds as they added languages with a very low amount of speakers such as Navajo, Hawaiian, Guarani and Māori and even High Valyrian and Klingon. I would hazard a guess that more people would find use in Iranian.

(For the record, I’m not saying the above languages shouldn’t be included, rather that the argument doesn’t hold up)

Re: Duolingo Max, a learning experience powered by GPT-4

#154

Post by no_butterscotch »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #86

Ugh. You can just feel the management layers in this. Management wants to do something with AI. It's so hot right now. Your product guy got an idea for a cool new feature. Tests show that users actually like it. It's helpful. Great. But now you need to explain how you made Duolingo money. First idea, your product has a paid tier, add it as a feature to the paid tier too boost paid user retention and new signups. Grea…

I use Duolingo, but only free. They've given me free access to their super tier twice now for a few days or a week each time.

I assume at some point they'll do the same to try to give me a taste of this new product and maybe it'll be good?

Either way I'll wait and see for a free option. I understand your skepticism. But I hope it ends up being a fun (and importantly: effective!) new way to learn.

Re: Duolingo Max, a learning experience powered by GPT-4

#155

Post by Pelayu »

akhosravian wrote: post #66

Would love to use duolingo, but they have no interest in supporting iranian languages. I’ve never really seen a clear answer for why. They have about 200 million native speakers worldwide. Persian, Pashto, Kurdish are the largest.

This is the same for me but with Basque. People have been campaigning to get a course published for years now, with volunteers willing to help, but for whatever reason they refuse; which is a shame as from a linguistic point of view it is a very rare and interesting language and culture and would help people in Spain a lot in my opinion.

Re: Duolingo Max, a learning experience powered by GPT-4

#156

Post by Pelayu »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #101

I understand why Duolingo is concentrating on what makes them money and what the most learned languages are. But as someone interested in "less popular" languages I don't like it. Even the Chinese course hasn't been expanded since it came out. And Finnish probably never will be expanded, since it was entirely volunteer driven and they don't do that at all anymore.

This is the same for me but with Basque. People have been campaigning to get a course published for years now, with volunteers willing to help, but for whatever reason they refuse; which is a shame as from a linguistic point of view it is a very rare and interesting language and culture and would help people in Spain a lot in my opinion.

Re: Duolingo Max, a learning experience powered by GPT-4

#157

Post by Pelayu »

skizm wrote: post #71

I’ve got a trip to Spain in 4 months. I know a few spanish words now, but nothing beyond that. Will Duolingo get me to some level of being able to muddle my way through conversations (assuming the other person knows I’m a tourist and is using small words) in that timeframe?

I would highly recommend the Memrise app instead and maybe some actual study when you start getting into grammar you don’t understand if time permits.

Re: Duolingo Max, a learning experience powered by GPT-4

#158

Post by kzrdude »

aeturnum wrote: post #20

This is interesting because my impression is that LLMs perform poorly on non-english languages[1]. This is likely 'just' a corpus size problem - but it's not like that is going to be fixed any time soon. That said, at least in language instruction there's a lot of meta material that will be helpful. I wonder how Duolingo is detecting when GPT-4 is hallucinating. [1] https://twitter.com/asmelashteka/status/16309662332…

Bing chatbot's swedish is pretty good, but if you ask it to tell a joke it's often an english language pun that got translated and the point was lost.

At least that's impressive in another way, that the knowledge model behind the pun seems to be a bit independent of language.

Re: Duolingo Max, a learning experience powered by GPT-4

#159

Post by recuter »

jonas21 wrote: post #148
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #86

Ugh. You can just feel the management layers in this. Management wants to do something with AI. It's so hot right now. Your product guy got an idea for a cool new feature. Tests show that users actually like it. It's helpful. Great. But now you need to explain how you made Duolingo money. First idea, your product has a paid tier, add it as a feature to the paid tier too boost paid user retention and new signups. Grea…

These are game-changing improvements to language learning, things that previously you'd only get by going to a human language tutor. And the first thing that comes to mind is to complain about them adding a pricing tier? I know HN tends to be cynical, but really?

It was literally just announced hours ago and already the game is changed.

Tout le jeu, jamais le même, nous parlons couramment maintenant grâce au brillant hibou d'action.

A légpárnásom tele van angolnákkal!

Re: Duolingo Max, a learning experience powered by GPT-4

#160

Post by larkost »

llbeansandrice wrote: post #72
atlasunshrugged wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also use it daily but I'm a bit worried I won't concentrate as much if I have unlimited hearts, have you noticed any decline in recall? But yes, the ads are super annoying... especially the same one to upgrade Duolingo puts in every time!

I think any serious user should be using unlimited hearts. You learn by making mistakes.

I have found that it works better for me not have unlimited hearts. I make my mistakes, and in I am not ready on a level then I have to repeat it. And either way I then do practice rounds to fill my hearts back up to full (I try to always leave the app with full hearts).

In the times I have had SuperDuolingo for free Have been annoyed that I can just keep plowing through mistakes (really: lack of knowledge), and don't have to really learn things before moving on with them... I just have to guess right once for each question.

But I do agree that DuoLingo is all about learning by making mistakes. I wish they had a bit more focused teaching for grammar, at least it would help me with the Hungarian. For a few items I have had to go outside the app for lessons on what I am just not getting by repetition.

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