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ArXiv Papers as Audiobooks

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Re: ArXiv Papers as Audiobooks

#21

Post by Almondsetat »

julienchastang wrote: post #15
Almondsetat wrote: post #12

Papers are already difficult to process when reading them carefully multiple times, what even is the point of turning them into an audio version? I am genuinely at a loss, unless we are talking about blind people

The YouTube Channel may shed some light. As I understand this, it is not reading the paper, but interpreting or summarizing it with visual cues as to which section it is analyzing.

I still don't get the purpose. If you have a video to watch it's not an audiobook anymore. Secondly, why not just read the abstract? The paper might contain formulas (need to be carefully read to understand) and data (need to be carefully read to understand). If you strip the paper of its scientific elements then only a series of badly justified steps remain, at which point you might as well just consider the abstract + conclusions paragraphs

Re: ArXiv Papers as Audiobooks

#22

Post by [deleted] »

pulpfictional wrote: post #20

I've been looking for a good way to TTS longer PDFs and EPUBs into recordings so I may listen to them on the go. I'd like to take advantage of high quality TTS models but I'd prefer it to be one I may host myself. Haven't found the right way yet, I'm considering: https://github.com/MycroftAI/mimic3

[deleted]

Re: ArXiv Papers as Audiobooks

#23

Post by adi4213 »

josh-sematic wrote: post #9

https://www.listening.com/ does this as a service.FWIW I haven’t tried it myself. Edit: looks like they support a few traditional publishers as well.

Give oration (https://oration.app) a try! It’s cheaper and many of our users found it a better option than Listening

Re: ArXiv Papers as Audiobooks

#24

Post by adi4213 »

Nowado wrote: post #17
josh-sematic wrote: post #9

https://www.listening.com/ does this as a service.FWIW I haven’t tried it myself. Edit: looks like they support a few traditional publishers as well.

Last time I tried it, app literally just read papers. As in parsed arxiv pdfs text2speech. It was an awful misunderstanding of the medium. Unless it was rebuilt significantly over last months, it's just bad.

We built Oration (https://oration.app) to improve on issues like this. It also generates a summarized version

Re: ArXiv Papers as Audiobooks

#25

Post by adi4213 »

pulpfictional wrote: post #20

I've been looking for a good way to TTS longer PDFs and EPUBs into recordings so I may listen to them on the go. I'd like to take advantage of high quality TTS models but I'd prefer it to be one I may host myself. Haven't found the right way yet, I'm considering: https://github.com/MycroftAI/mimic3

If you’re an iOS user, try https://oration.app

Re: ArXiv Papers as Audiobooks

#26

Post by rhelz »

Uehreka wrote: post #4

When I’ve tried listening to YouTube videos explaining, say, Attention Is All You Need, I find that I cannot do it passively at all. The first 10 or so minutes I’m nodding along, folding laundry or doing dishes, then the presenter says something like “by reifying this tensor against the priors I was just talking about, we’re able to—“ and I have to pause, rewind a couple minutes, grab a piece of paper and actually en…

Just listening while doing nothing else is soporific, but I can imagine finding this invaluable if I had a long commute to work.

Re: ArXiv Papers as Audiobooks

#27

Post by chaxor »

Uehreka wrote: post #4

When I’ve tried listening to YouTube videos explaining, say, Attention Is All You Need, I find that I cannot do it passively at all. The first 10 or so minutes I’m nodding along, folding laundry or doing dishes, then the presenter says something like “by reifying this tensor against the priors I was just talking about, we’re able to—“ and I have to pause, rewind a couple minutes, grab a piece of paper and actually en…

There is definetly a way to make this happen though. Little bit o' whisper, Mixtral in some RAG, and you've got yourself a buddy to talk about the paper while it's reading it to you.

Of course everyone will immediately say this is dangerous and it may mislead you by giving wrong explanations, etc etc. and then others will counter with 'it will definitely get better over time' (the best models as products are ~3 years behind the improvements being show in academic work for example). However, ultimately this is just a neat product to make, even if it has some bugs. Listening to TTS right now spends about half the time reading jumbled numbers from tables and listing off author names. So just tackling that alone (which this would do much better) would be valuable.

Re: ArXiv Papers as Audiobooks

#28

Post by chaxor »

reader5000 wrote: post #13
Uehreka wrote: post #4

When I’ve tried listening to YouTube videos explaining, say, Attention Is All You Need, I find that I cannot do it passively at all. The first 10 or so minutes I’m nodding along, folding laundry or doing dishes, then the presenter says something like “by reifying this tensor against the priors I was just talking about, we’re able to—“ and I have to pause, rewind a couple minutes, grab a piece of paper and actually en…

Visual reading of dense papers also leads to failing to understand concepts or distractions.

This is a great point. People will complain if LMs are applying to anything, but ultimately it improves accessibility, and allows for someone to dive deeper when needed.

There will always be ways to misinterpret some academic work, and there are plenty of opportunities in the path of understanding a work to do that.

Allowing someone to engage with a work _at all_ by lifting some barriers (visually impaired people's for exampld) should be acknowledged as an improvement, not discouraged continually for having some bugs.

Re: ArXiv Papers as Audiobooks

#29

Post by chaxor »

Almondsetat wrote: post #21
julienchastang wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The YouTube Channel may shed some light. As I understand this, it is not reading the paper, but interpreting or summarizing it with visual cues as to which section it is analyzing.

I still don't get the purpose. If you have a video to watch it's not an audiobook anymore. Secondly, why not just read the abstract? The paper might contain formulas (need to be carefully read to understand) and data (need to be carefully read to understand). If you strip the paper of its scientific elements then only a series of badly justified steps remain, at which point you might as well just consider the abstrac…

What if you want to hear about the latest arxiv updates while on your morning run?

This seems like a fantastic idea for that purpose.

Re: ArXiv Papers as Audiobooks

#30

Post by julienchastang »

Almondsetat wrote: post #21
julienchastang wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The YouTube Channel may shed some light. As I understand this, it is not reading the paper, but interpreting or summarizing it with visual cues as to which section it is analyzing.

I still don't get the purpose. If you have a video to watch it's not an audiobook anymore. Secondly, why not just read the abstract? The paper might contain formulas (need to be carefully read to understand) and data (need to be carefully read to understand). If you strip the paper of its scientific elements then only a series of badly justified steps remain, at which point you might as well just consider the abstrac…

The choice of the word "audiobook" is really unfortunate. That's never mentioned on the GitHub project page. I find LLMs to do a decent job of summarizing text. Obviously, it depends on the audience. If it is a subject-matter expert, they may not be happy with the result, but a layperson might be.
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