I’ve been a regular user of the “Explain” feature. It’s been greatly beneficial to me and my learning. Even though I know it can be inaccurate, it’s been a huge value add for me. However, it seems like the responses have been recorded some time ago with legacy models. Today’s new models from Anthropic / OpenAI / Google are way better at these tasks and re-running this would greatly improve quality.
Additionally and alternatively, I’d suggest including an option to customize your prompt (so many responses start with “Sure!” and have all kinds of fluff) and let users hook up their own API key for a selected model. That way, you can offload the cost and provide the necessary customization.
As far as environmental concerns, our usage of ChatGPT is quite minimal, and we will continue to minimize our use of it
would no longer be true if either of your requests were implemented:
re-generate explanations for tens of thousands of sentences every time the generating models are considered legacy
instead of 1 generated explanation per 1 sentence that all users share, enabling $n+1$ generated explanations per 1 sentence if $n$ different users each want to use a prompt of their own, and presumably also first try out $m$ different prompts on 1 sentence before they like the explanation
It’s great that Clozemaster has worked on saving responses to minimise the number of times that they are generated, which is so much better than almost any other tool trying to use AI. I do agree though that an update with time is needed if better sources become available (same applies to generated audio for pronunciation). In addition, these features are also needed for custom collections (which are key for those who use Clozemaster to supplement a language course with their own required vocabulary per lesson). If Clozemaster can support saving each response for everyone that would be fantastic, but even saving locally just once for the user/device would be a big gain. I’m afraid otherwise people will use other tools where every interaction is based on generating AI contents afresh.
If GenAI weren’t burning our planet, I’d just say, “Let the people chase their shiny new toy.” If the GenAI bubble wouldn’t be crashing our entire economy once investors realize they will never get their money back, I’d just stay silent and let the people get aboard the hype train.
But with Europe becoming more than 5°C hotter than pre-industrialization levels before the year 2100 due to new data centers, this affects me personally. I will have to flee my home country Germany before the next decade is over because it will be too hot to survive in Germany. Because shortsighted people demand ever more AI.
Clozemaster doesn’t “need” an update, same as your iPhone 17 Pro doesn’t “need” to be replaced when the iPhone 18 Pro is released.
GenAI produces mostly “slop”. Let those people go. The more intelligent ones will quickly come back to Clozemaster.
And many, like me, won’t leave in the first place.
I guess ‘needs’ has a subjective component - at A2/B1 I certainly need explanations for some sentences, even if indeed Clozemaster is not the only possible source for that (and for most useful custom collections it is currently not anyway).
Even more than the explanations I need good audio. For Dutch the current voices are are best mediocre (and one is quite bad), especially for elements beyond individual sounds, i.e. with respect to stress (at sentence level and sometimes even at word level), intonation and rhythm which for Dutch are all rather important. It did not bother me much at A1 level, but now starting B1 when there is more emphasis on prosody, I really notice it. I can now generate much more ‘correct’ audio with current tools but unfortunately can not link it with Clozemaster. Of course, ideally there would be a real native speaker audio, but that does not seem realistic for all languages even for the standard collections, not to mention custom ones.
PS: as for uses of AI, I’m not suggesting it for sentence generation or something like that, just to improve the already existing AI elements for better ones.
Your post seems to come from a quite self-centered perspective.
Have you understood my post? Considered any of my arguments? The demand for AI and the consequential construction of additional data centers will kill us all.
That is fine. So do I.
If only Clozemaster would provide some place for exchange where we can pose our questions and point out which part of the sentence we don’t understand—almost like a prompt for an LLM—but instead of a hallucinating LLM an actual native speaker or advanced learner would explain the sentence to us.
I don’t think seeking out further these points of disagreement will help this forum.
PS: I use ‘I’ as I speak for myself and can not presume having a mandate to speak for everybody (which would have been very self-centered)