Please add this new reading feature

Clozemaster
#21

I agree with the sentiment, but I ask to use different terminology. We must stop anthropomorphizing “AI”. In simpler words, don’t make “AI” look like a human. It isn’t human, so don’t pretend it were. “AI” is a program on a computer, not unlike Spotify or Firefox, whose task is to produce statistically likely text (as opposed to playing a song).

ChatGPT doesn’t “make stuff up”. Making stuff up is what humans do and ChatGPT isn’t human. Likewise, ChatGPT doesn’t “hallucinate”, which again would attribute human characteristics to something that isn’t human.

It’s not that the magical ghost in the machine sometimes “hallucinates” as though it just ate a bunch of mushrooms on a spiritual journey to find its inner self. No, it’s that a bunch of sociopathic CEOs made their overpaid engineers (who are members of a cult) deploy a flawed technology that doesn’t work and (yet again) failed to produce the correct result. They should be held criminally liable, not be praised and admired and defended by using language that works in their favor.

If you tell Spotify to play Mozart and it plays Beethoven, Spotify didn’t hallucinate. No, it failed at its task and the software developers working for Spotify made a mistake at best or are incompetent at worst.

Once upon a time, we valued when technology worked and produced correct results. We didn’t excuse its fundamental flaws with cutesy language like, “oh it hallucinated again, it should reduce its dose of shrooms lol”.

In case of error, blame the humans who make the software, not some magical spirit within the software.

The people you should listen to are Timnit Gebru and Emily Bender, not random websites that repeat the harmful anthropomorphization and terminology.

#22

LLMs suck at math.

Well that’s just obviously false. I’m not sure in which context you’re using the word “suck” but the quality of math, science, engineering, programming, pretty much everything these frontier models are doing now is insanely good. They are already as good as PhD researchers so give it one more year and these models will be displacing them.

#23

Not to take this conversation too far off-topic or waste my time any more with a believer who won’t listen anyway, but you’re making all these grandiose fabulous unfounded claims, all of which are false (“next year AI will replace all PhD researchers” “what is your source?” “just trust me bro.”).

If “AI” is so good at math, then why did OpenAI need to steal research from humans?

In 2015 already, Google and Elon Musk promised we’d have self-driving cars and people on Mars within the next year. These people are lying, and every time people like you believe these liars. “Next year AI will work, give it one more year, just trust me bro.”

How would you even defend fabulous claims such as this?

They are already as good as PhD researchers

If we assume you’re not just making stuff up, how do you back up such grandiose claims with facts? By having the humans take an IQ test? And put some similar number on the latest LLM through a benchmark? And then compare these numbers? If so, by proposing IQ tests, you’re entering deeply eugenicist territory. But surely you’re not a racist eugenicist, so how do you back up claims like these with facts, preferably without eugenics? You can’t. You’re just uncritically parrotting what the people in the podcasts you watch, are saying: sentences straight out of the marketing departments of “AI” companies.

As I’ve written on multiple other occasions here in the forum already: You’re entitled to have your own (informed) opinion, but you’re not entitled to make up your own facts, or spread billionaires’ lies and unfounded falsehoods. Especially when you ignore every fact and source I’ve brought to the discussion. Your comments are unserious, not withstanding any closer examination and divorced from reality.

In one year you’ll be unemployed because the bubble has popped, the economy is crashed, everyone who bought OpenAI shares lost their money. That’s much more likely than what you are saying. I cannot take AI bros or their ideas seriously and you’ve outed yourself to be one.

Anyone reading along, please read this:

2 Likes
#24

As I’ve already written here, if Clozemaster implements this idea, then the quote by Mike will have been a lie:

As far as environmental concerns, our usage of ChatGPT is quite minimal, and we will continue to minimize our use of it

I don’t see how adding ever more LLM-based features could count as “we will continue to minimize our use of LLMs”.

Edit: Since a number of people replied in the meantime that this quote is two years old already … Nothing about the validity of the arguments I made back then has changed since then in the past two years. My arguments from back then still are just as valid as when I made them. The common counter-argument, “but the planet-burning LLMs that are wrong all the time are useful” remains unconvincing.

1 Like
#25

Mike made that comment nearly 2 years ago. The difference between these LLMs from 2024 to now is staggering. But just like the previous user, you’re anti AI and that’s fine. I won’t consider arguing with you.

However if they do implement this feature, or consider adding other LLM related features, people like you who don’t like them can simply ignore them and don’t use them.

I don’t like the current cloze reading, so I don’t use it. Pretty simple really.

1 Like
#26

your comment seems to be driven by moral and not by the intention of looking for its potential. I myself oppose those big AI firms and think, that Ai shouldnt be in the hands of private companies, but much rather in democratic hands, fulfilling the needs of the society. But when it comes to grammar and speech there is simply no denying, that it is just great for creating grammaticly correct sentences and especially correct humans. It is normal, that natives in my country (germany) correct their grammar and commas by running it through an ai. Even profs in my uni recommend it because it just excells even educated humans. Actually I dont care about the math part, even though you cant really deny, that with this tempo it will overcome humans in the next years.

1 Like
#27

Even Microsoft Word is a good spell checker and punctuation marker.

I am not explicitly anti-AI. I haven’t had good success using it for learning a language. It is fine on the basics. Anything beyond that has been a crap shoot IME. The errors were blatant. It would say one thing, I would contradict it. Then it would say the exact opposite like it had not just said the opposite. If I asked, it would say, Now I’m right. When it started spinning like that, it was a sign to me that the subject was too complex for AI. AI itself told me that I was correct in that assumption.

We don’t know yet where AI can go or what it can do or how fast. Some of its behaviors are troubling. We don’t know what the limits are. Are the big statements of where it will be in a year because people believe it or because somebody who will get richer from it wants you to believe it? Sometimes progress on something just stops. Researchers hit a wall and they don’t know how to get around it. In any case, progress is rarely linear.

In any case, any output (not just AI output) has to be verified by a qualified person. Generating things by AI is often simple and fast, but vetting it for use is not. And nothing in software is simple. You change one line of code and it can fundamentally change the entire system. Every single change has to be tested.

1 Like
#28

Thanks for all the input!

@Alxndr thanks for clarifying.

  • Full stories you can read
  • No missing words
  • TTS for the whole story so you can listen/shadow along

That’s helpful, and it’s essentially the direction we’re exploring with the Reading feature in the mobile app I mentioned, so that’s exciting.

Good point! And interesting idea about expiring stories.

:raised_hands:

A couple of concerns came up:

  • Whether generated text is accurate enough for learners @corgwin24
  • My earlier statement about keeping LLM use minimal @davidculley

On accuracy, @corgwin24 - good point that generating content is fast but checking it isn’t. If we move forward with generated stories, we’d likely look at reusing stories across learners at the same level instead of generating one per request, which would also let us run them through a proofreading layer like we do with other content. The tradeoff is that they’d be less personalized than the original feature request. Either way, the feature would be opt-in.

On LLM use, to be upfront: I made that statement nearly two years ago, and it no longer reflects where we’re headed. We think LLMs open up a lot of useful ways to practice, so our use will likely grow.

One request for everyone: the last several posts have gotten personal. Disagreement is welcome, but please keep it about ideas rather than each other. And let’s keep this thread focused on the reading feature. If you’d like to continue the broader discussion about AI, please feel free to open a separate topic.

7 Likes
#29

Thanks for the feedback Mike. I actually think your option of fewer less customised stories, but proof read by humans is the perfect middle ground.

But I think to get this right, the stories must contain lots of words the user has already mastered. Otherwise it’ll just be completely out of touch with what they’ve learned.

Look forward to seeing something like this in the future.

1 Like