#language learning with AI

[theenglishnook]

AI teaches grammar, but not empathy. Human connection—through emotion, culture, and spontaneity—is what makes language truly come alive. It's the art, not just the mechanics, that only people can share.

[victusinveritas]

I am SHOCKED that making Grok "unwoke" literally turned it into, in its own words, Mechahitler.

[river-taxbird]

AI hasn't improved in 18 months. It's likely that this is it. There is currently no evidence the capabilities of ChatGPT will ever improve. It's time for AI companies to put up or shut up.

I'm just re-iterating this excellent post from Ed Zitron, but it's not left my head since I read it and I want to share it. I'm also taking some talking points from Ed's other posts. So basically:

We keep hearing AI is going to get better and better, but these promises seem to be coming from a mix of companies engaging in wild speculation and lying.

Chatgpt, the industry leading large language model, has not materially improved in 18 months. For something that claims to be getting exponentially better, it sure is the same shit.

Hallucinations appear to be an inherent aspect of the technology. Since it's based on statistics and ai doesn't know anything, it can never know what is true. How could I possibly trust it to get any real work done if I can't rely on it's output? If I have to fact check everything it says I might as well do the work myself.

For "real" ai that does know what is true to exist, it would require us to discover new concepts in psychology, math, and computing, which open ai is not working on, and seemingly no other ai companies are either.

Open ai has already seemingly slurped up all the data from the open web already. Chatgpt 5 would take 5x more training data than chatgpt 4 to train. Where is this data coming from, exactly?

Since improvement appears to have ground to a halt, what if this is it? What if Chatgpt 4 is as good as LLMs can ever be? What use is it?

As Jim Covello, a leading semiconductor analyst at Goldman Sachs said (on page 10, and that's big finance so you know they only care about money): if tech companies are spending a trillion dollars to build up the infrastructure to support ai, what trillion dollar problem is it meant to solve? AI companies have a unique talent for burning venture capital and it's unclear if Open AI will be able to survive more than a few years unless everyone suddenly adopts it all at once. (Hey, didn't crypto and the metaverse also require spontaneous mass adoption to make sense?)

There is no problem that current ai is a solution to. Consumer tech is basically solved, normal people don't need more tech than a laptop and a smartphone. Big tech have run out of innovations, and they are desperately looking for the next thing to sell. It happened with the metaverse and it's happening again.

In summary:

Ai hasn't materially improved since the launch of Chatgpt4, which wasn't that big of an upgrade to 3.

There is currently no technological roadmap for ai to become better than it is. (As Jim Covello said on the Goldman Sachs report, the evolution of smartphones was openly planned years ahead of time.) The current problems are inherent to the current technology and nobody has indicated there is any way to solve them in the pipeline. We have likely reached the limits of what LLMs can do, and they still can't do much.

Don't believe AI companies when they say things are going to improve from where they are now before they provide evidence. It's time for the AI shills to put up, or shut up.

[reasonsforhope]

"As a Deaf man, Adam Munder has long been advocating for communication rights in a world that chiefly caters to hearing people. 

The Intel software engineer and his wife — who is also Deaf — are often unable to use American Sign Language in daily interactions, instead defaulting to texting on a smartphone or passing a pen and paper back and forth with service workers, teachers, and lawyers. 

It can make simple tasks, like ordering coffee, more complicated than it should be. 

But there are life events that hold greater weight than a cup of coffee. 

Recently, Munder and his wife took their daughter in for a doctor’s appointment — and no interpreter was available. 

To their surprise, their doctor said: “It’s alright, we’ll just have your daughter interpret for you!” ...

That day at the doctor’s office came at the heels of a thousand frustrating interactions and miscommunications — and Munder is not isolated in his experience.

“Where I live in Arizona, there are more than 1.1 million individuals with a hearing loss,” Munder said, “and only about 400 licensed interpreters.”

In addition to being hard to find, interpreters are expensive. And texting and writing aren’t always practical options — they leave out the emotion, detail, and nuance of a spoken conversation. 

ASL is a rich, complex language with its own grammar and culture; a subtle change in speed, direction, facial expression, or gesture can completely change the meaning and tone of a sign. 

“Writing back and forth on paper and pen or using a smartphone to text is not equivalent to American Sign Language,” Munder emphasized. “The details and nuance that make us human are lost in both our personal and business conversations.”

His solution? An AI-powered platform called Omnibridge. 

“My team has established this bridge between the Deaf world and the hearing world, bringing these worlds together without forcing one to adapt to the other,” Munder said. 

Trained on thousands of signs, Omnibridge is engineered to transcribe spoken English and interpret sign language on screen in seconds...

“Our dream is that the technology will be available to everyone, everywhere,” Munder said. “I feel like three to four years from now, we're going to have an app on a phone. Our team has already started working on a cloud-based product, and we're hoping that will be an easy switch from cloud to mobile to an app.” ...

At its heart, Omnibridge is a testament to the positive capabilities of artificial intelligence. "

-via GoodGoodGood, October 25, 2024. More info below the cut!

To test an alpha version of his invention, Munder welcomed TED associate Hasiba Haq on stage. 

“I want to show you how this could have changed my interaction at the doctor appointment, had this been available,” Munder said. 

He went on to explain that the software would generate a bi-directional conversation, in which Munder’s signs would appear as blue text and spoken word would appear in gray. 

At first, there was a brief hiccup on the TED stage. Haq, who was standing in as the doctor’s office receptionist, spoke — but the screen remained blank. 

“I don’t believe this; this is the first time that AI has ever failed,” Munder joked, getting a big laugh from the crowd. “Thanks for your patience.”

After a quick reboot, they rolled with the punches and tried again.

Haq asked: “Hi, how’s it going?” 

Her words popped up in blue. 

Munder signed in reply: “I am good.” 

His response popped up in gray. 

Back and forth, they recreated the scene from the doctor’s office. But this time Munder retained his autonomy, and no one suggested a 7-year-old should play interpreter. 

Munder’s TED debut and tech demonstration didn’t happen overnight — the engineer has been working on Omnibridge for over a decade. 

“It takes a lot to build something like this,” Munder told Good Good Good in an exclusive interview, communicating with our team in ASL. “It couldn't just be one or two people. It takes a large team, a lot of resources, millions and millions of dollars to work on a project like this.” 

After five years of pitching and research, Intel handpicked Munder’s team for a specialty training program. It was through that backing that Omnibridge began to truly take shape...

“Our dream is that the technology will be available to everyone, everywhere,” Munder said. “I feel like three to four years from now, we're going to have an app on a phone. Our team has already started working on a cloud-based product, and we're hoping that will be an easy switch from cloud to mobile to an app.” 

In order to achieve that dream — of transposing their technology to a smartphone — Munder and his team have to play a bit of a waiting game. Today, their platform necessitates building the technology on a PC, with an AI engine. 

“A lot of things don't have those AI PC types of chips,” Munder explained. “But as the technology evolves, we expect that smartphones will start to include AI engines. They'll start to include the capability in processing within smartphones. It will take time for the technology to catch up to it, and it probably won't need the power that we're requiring right now on a PC.” 

At its heart, Omnibridge is a testament to the positive capabilities of artificial intelligence. 

But it is more than a transcription service — it allows people to have face-to-face conversations with each other. There’s a world of difference between passing around a phone or pen and paper and looking someone in the eyes when you speak to them. 

It also allows Deaf people to speak ASL directly, without doing the mental gymnastics of translating their words into English.

“For me, English is my second language,” Munder told Good Good Good. “So when I write in English, I have to think: How am I going to adjust the words? How am I going to write it just right so somebody can understand me? It takes me some time and effort, and it's hard for me to express myself actually in doing that. This technology allows someone to be able to express themselves in their native language.” 

Ultimately, Munder said that Omnibridge is about “bringing humanity back” to these conversations. 

“We’re changing the world through the power of AI, not just revolutionizing technology, but enhancing that human connection,” Munder said at the end of his TED Talk. 

“It’s two languages,” he concluded, “signed and spoken, in one seamless conversation.”"

-via GoodGoodGood, October 25, 2024

[ineed-to-sleep]

Ran into another post about the disney-midjourney lawsuit discourse and tbh it baffles me every time. You guys Do know it's already illegal to sell fanart, right? You know that the lawsuit isn't calling for expansion of copyright law and disney doesn't need to expand it in order to win, right? You know disney is only *really* suing midjourney because it has a subscription option(profit) and has the capacity to mass produce copyrighted work(scale), and the interest disney has in this is entirely money based, and they won't suddenly see a monetary benefit to be gained from suing small artists after this(who neither make enough of a profit nor produce their work in a large enough scale to become a real competitor for disney), right? You know making money off of copyrighted work that's not yours or that you don't have a license for hasn't been protected by the law for a really long time and we make it despite this because we know it's very unlikely to give us trouble, right? Right guys? Right???? You know your rights, don't you guys?????? Guys????????????????

[mintjeru]

hot girl summer 🔥

open for better quality | no reposts

[justalittlesolarpunk]

Solarpunks, I need your help! I just discovered that the language learning app I downloaded as an alternative to Duolingo’s AI slop in fact also uses AI! 🤬🤬🤬

Pls, can anyone recommend a language app that actually helps you with fluency and *doesn’t* use planet-wrecking work-stealing technology?

[hotwaterandmilk]

I don't know why but I find these brief profiles for the love angels in Shougaku Ichinensei 11/1994 really cute. Illustrations above by Kirishima Sent.

-

Wedding Peach / Hanasaki Momoko

Born March 3rd. Blood type 0. Cheerful, but a little clumsy… A girl with angelic blood who fights devils using the power of love.

Angel Lily / Tanima Yuri

Born July 7th. Blood type A. Gentle, good at fortune telling. A girl with angelic blood who fights devils using the power of intelligence.

Angel Daisy / Tamano Hinagiku

Born May 5th. Blood type B. Tomboyish, good at fighting. A girl with angelic blood who fights devils using the power of courage.

-

While the girls are still described as angels, their profiles state that they each combat the devils using different "powers". Love for Peach, intelligence and courage for Lily and Daisy respectively.

I also find it interesting that Yuri is described as having a talent for fortune-telling in this profile. In the Secret File art book section discussing the original setting ideas for the series, Hinagiku was planned to have precognition/clairvoyance talents. However, none of the heroines retained this as a primary character trait in the finalised anime or Ciao manga (save for Yuri suggesting the missing bride's location in episode 9 of the anime).

While courage stayed as a core element of Daisy's power and persona in both anime and manga (Hinagiku performs her oironaoshi by calling "Angel Courage Daisy"), Lily's intelligence didn't become amalgamated in the same way. Interestingly though, the hint at psychic ability did remain in the oironaoshi call "Angel Prescience Lily".

This is what I love love love about older media mix titles like Wedding Peach. There are just so many changes across the different adaptations that I'm still finding out new things as I gain access to various old magazines (which is hard because ugh, they're SO expensive). And there really are a lot of different versions of the Wedding Peach story to read in print alone:

If I had a bunch of spare cash on hand right now for fandom purposes I'd be buying more magazines to scan/share and paying someone to do a proper translation of the Secret File book (because I really can't get the nuance right with the interviews). Oh well, I can dream!

[akaessi]

Duolingo's annoying and outlandish marketing scheme is supposed to distract you from the fact that they are routinely utilizing AI to structure/moderate/and otherwise create language lessons.

For years, language experts and learners have been requesting that the app include languages such as Icelandic and other languages with relatively low populations of native speakers. additionally, while Duolingo has been credited with "playing a key role in preserving indigenous languages," they have yet to fulfill their promises of adding additional at-risk languages. Specifically,  Yucatec and K’iche, which the app faced "setbacks for." Even worse, in my opinion, is the fact that they are utilizing AI to create language courses in Navajo and Hawaiian.

The ethics of using AI to model and create indigenous languages cannot be ignored. What are their systems siphoning from? Language revitalization without a community being involved and credited is language theft and colonization. (I can't even get into the environmental impact of AI).

Instead of working with more language experts, hiring linguists, and spending more on their language programs, more and more money is being poured into their marketing. While they have a heavy team of computational and theoretical linguists, there seem to be fewer and fewer language experts and social linguists involved.

Their research section has not had a publication listed since 2021. Another research site Duolingo hosts on the efficacy of Duolingo has publications as recently as 2024, but only a total of 5 publications (2021-2024) listed were peer-reviewed and only 2 additional publications were independent research reports (2022 & 2023). The remaining 9 publications were Duolingo internal research reports. So, while a major marketing feature of the app is the "science backed, researched based, approach" there is much to be desired from their research setting. Additionally, the manner on how they personally determine efficacy in their own reports, as written in this blog post, has an insufficient dataset.

And while they openly share their datasets derived from Duolingo users, there are no clear bibliographies for individual language courses. What datasets are their curriculum creators using? And what curriculum creators do they even have left considering their massive layoffs of their translations team (10%) and the remaining translators being tasked with editing AI content?

Duo can be run over by a goddamn cybertruck but god forbid the app actually spend any money on the language programs you're playing with.

[victusinveritas]

From Rebecca Solnit:

When you outsource thinking, your brain goes on vacation. "EEG analysis presented robust evidence that LLM, Search Engine and Brain-only groups had significantly different neural connectivity patterns, reflecting divergent cognitive strategies. Brain connectivity systematically scaled down with the amount of external support: the Brain‑only group exhibited the strongest, widest‑ranging networks, Search Engine group showed intermediate engagement, and LLM assistance elicited the weakest overall coupling."

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.08872

But also here's a fantastic essay on the subject: "Now, in the age of the internet—when the Library of Alexandria could fit on a medium-sized USB stick and the collected wisdom of humanity is available with a click—we’re engaged in a rather large, depressingly inept social experiment of downloading endless knowledge while offloading intelligence to machines. (Look around to see how it’s going). That’s why convincing students that intelligence is a skill they must cultivate through hard work—no shortcuts—has become one of the core functions of education."

https://www.forkingpaths.co/p/the-death-of-the-student-essayand

[river-taxbird]

There is no such thing as AI.

How to help the non technical and less online people in your life navigate the latest techbro grift.

I've seen other people say stuff to this effect but it's worth reiterating. Today in class, my professor was talking about a news article where a celebrity's likeness was used in an ai image without their permission. Then she mentioned a guest lecture about how AI is going to help finance professionals. Then I pointed out, those two things aren't really related.

The term AI is being used to obfuscate details about multiple semi-related technologies.

Traditionally in sci-fi, AI means artificial general intelligence like Data from star trek, or the terminator. This, I shouldn't need to say, doesn't exist. Techbros use the term AI to trick investors into funding their projects. It's largely a grift.

What is the term AI being used to obfuscate?

If you want to help the less online and less tech literate people in your life navigate the hype around AI, the best way to do it is to encourage them to change their language around AI topics.

By calling these technologies what they really are, and encouraging the people around us to know the real names, we can help lift the veil, kill the hype, and keep people safe from scams. Here are some starting points, which I am just pulling from Wikipedia. I'd highly encourage you to do your own research.

Machine learning (ML): is an umbrella term for solving problems for which development of algorithms by human programmers would be cost-prohibitive, and instead the problems are solved by helping machines "discover" their "own" algorithms, without needing to be explicitly told what to do by any human-developed algorithms. (This is the basis of most technologically people call AI)

Language model: (LM or LLM) is a probabilistic model of a natural language that can generate probabilities of a series of words, based on text corpora in one or multiple languages it was trained on. (This would be your ChatGPT.)

Generative adversarial network (GAN): is a class of machine learning framework and a prominent framework for approaching generative AI. In a GAN, two neural networks contest with each other in the form of a zero-sum game, where one agent's gain is another agent's loss. (This is the source of some AI images and deepfakes.)

Diffusion Models: Models that generate the probability distribution of a given dataset. In image generation, a neural network is trained to denoise images with added gaussian noise by learning to remove the noise. After the training is complete, it can then be used for image generation by starting with a random noise image and denoise that. (This is the more common technology behind AI images, including Dall-E and Stable Diffusion. I added this one to the post after as it was brought to my attention it is now more common than GANs.)

I know these terms are more technical, but they are also more accurate, and they can easily be explained in a way non-technical people can understand. The grifters are using language to give this technology its power, so we can use language to take it's power away and let people see it for what it really is.

[apollos-boyfriend]

overhearing my 10 year old cousin watch a video talking about the dangers of misinformation in things like chatgpt and how you should not just mistrust the information but also the intentions of people attempting to sell it to you…… the kids are alright ❤️

[ghostjelliess]

Had to get serious with a .3 mm pen cus the .5 jelly rolls smudged too much 😭 now I get why Muji pens are like that.

Learning essential phrases, thanks Duo! 🙏

Just curious how it translates! It worked!

Oh, I wonder how my worksheets translate. It will look funny, like: soup soup soup soup soup soup...

Ope... 👀 Should have stayed curious. 😒

[dead-sp1der]

I love hearing Martyn talk about the Misadventure NPC AI's because it's still definitely Generative AI, just probably not the unethical kind

If it's a handcrafted Language Model (which.. wow that's crazy impressive) that's trained on non-stolen data, I can't see an ethical reason to not use it

Still very much Generative AI tho 😭 <3

[these-trans-hands]

Duolingo becoming ai garbage wasn't on my list of 2025 predictions, but I'm not surprised unfortunately

Not 100% perfect? On a language learning app? Does that mean we're just supposed to be ok being taught bad information so that you can pay less employees? Piss off.

[3rdexistence]

For everyone recommending Busuu as an alternative for Duolingo: stop.

It uses AI voices (as in literally the "sigma chad guy voice used on TikTok).

Plus, today I recieved a deepfake video on a listening exercise (speakers' facial expressions didn't match their tone or what they were saying, those unnatural circular head movements that most deepfake videos do, very periodic blinking and arm movement, eye level never changes).

Additionally, I'm pretty sure that the German course to learn Dutch is just a translation of the English version, because the German instructions were often weird/unnecessary/explaining stuff you wouldn't have to explain to a German speaker but to an English speaker.

Also on some translations they straight-up forgot to change the English translation to a German one.

At this point it just feels like we have to abandon the concept of language learning apps completely because they're all starting to use AI (and AI does *not* understand language).

tldr: Busuu is just as bad as Duolingo because it uses AI translations, voices, and videos