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applesan

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Show HN: Ane Ninja – simply and quickly quiz your Japanese in various ways

aneninja.com
3 points·by applesan·hace 3 años·0 comments

Long-Term Homeless Info/Advice [video]

youtube.com
1 points·by applesan·hace 3 años·0 comments

comments

applesan
·hace 3 años·discuss
"The only areas where AI delivers the goods are spamming, scamming & shamming."

I don't know why such hyperbolic statements are being made. I still find chatGPT useful for example when I want to find something that I can only vaguely describe (TV show from my childhood) or when I need simple help (write function in excel).

Also I don't like AI and LLMs are used synonymously. AI is useful in medicine, agriculture, chemistry...
applesan
·hace 3 años·discuss
That's understandable,these tools definitely can be helpful, but learners should know their limitations and problems.

Also I just think speaking to the actual native speaker is still much better practice, especially given tts quality. It even pronounces words incorrectly in Japanese (wrong pitch accent).
applesan
·hace 3 años·discuss
I agree that chatting and speaking requires different skill set. However I would argue that it is even more of an argument to not use speech recognition here (or at least not to force it), because chatGPT is chatting and learner is speaking. Transcription will always lose some information (for example your tone can indicate sarcasm, but chatGPT can't detect it).

To the second point: whisper can be helpful, but how can you know if it fails because of you and not the software's error? I spoke in my native language with traditional accent and it still made mistakes, also it hallucinates. Additionally being understood by whisper doesn't mean, native will understand you.
applesan
·hace 3 años·discuss
Generally if you are beginner and want to actually learn the language, you should focus on the input not the output.

Few problems I find with these kind of apps:

How is that different from just using chatGPT?

Why can't I just write my response instead of using mic?

chatGPT makes mistakes, as a beginner you can't spot them. (I talked to it in polish (my native language), it was making grammar mistakes)

Speech recognition is not the same as native listening to you, speech recognition software may "understand" you, but native would not and vice versa.

ChatGPT can't correct your pronunciation.

Replies generated are stiff and unnatural.

TTS can't model speech accurately (it lacks emotions etc.)
applesan
·hace 3 años·discuss
I don't understand, how is that different from just using chatgpt?

Generally I don't think it is good idea to use LLMs for learning languages, especially if it wasn't trained primarily on that language. Also if you are beginner, how can you know if what it says is even correct?

From my experience, it makes a lot of mistakes (at least in Japanese and Polish).
applesan
·hace 3 años·discuss
I watched the video, but I don't think this is practical. You can't realistically learn Japanese with gpt 3.5 as it makes ton of mistakes, gpt 4 is better, but still wouldn't use it. Even in this video it doesn't explain meaning of word 動産, but instead only breaks it down to kanji. Also you made mistake in your answer, you don't say おほしい and gpt didn't even correct it.
applesan
·hace 3 años·discuss
It has nothing to do with Hwang. Hwang's paper was published in Science and he was called pride of Korea. In superconductor case we see infighting and even Koreans are very sceptical. If anything people who hyped this paper were mostly randoms on twitter.
applesan
·hace 3 años·discuss
Pascal and Logo Turtle are programming languages I learned at school, but never used them outside of it. I hated them back then. I don't know if this was teacher or language fault, but these IT lessons couldn't be more boring and confusing.
applesan
·hace 3 años·discuss
“If you watch all [the trailers], you know everything that’s going to happen in that movie. So how do moviegoers feel about that? There must be people, who, after watching all the trailers, don’t want to actually go see the movie.”

That's how I feel, I like watching trailers, but then I don't feel the need to actually watch a movie. Back when I had more free time I would watch 50 random trailers instead of going to cinema...
applesan
·hace 3 años·discuss
I get his point, but it may be too late for it as some applications even have backends in js..

However I agree that it is somewhat problematic that instead of creating new languages, we create frameworks (sometimes frameworks based on other frameworks like nextjs). Especially considering how messy js can be.
applesan
·hace 3 años·discuss
I've seen some move to tildes.
applesan
·hace 3 años·discuss
For me all the programs from adobe creative suite not working is the biggest reason why I'm hesitant to switch.