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Comment by amelius | Hacker News Reader

Meanwhile there are millions of people in poor countries who would love to have a conversation with you in French, Spanish, Portuguese, etc. over Skype.

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There’s also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italki. But I actually have shied away from it, mainly because I get nervous talking in front of a live person who will be judging my capability as I talk. I much prefer the idea of a non-feeling ML algorithm talking back at me, even if it makes GPT-3 like gibberish mistakes.

Poor countries people with a laptop, a descent internet connection for streaming, available at any time of the day instantly, and ready to have a 2 minutes stupid conversation about anything random ?

Not so sure ..

>Poor countries people with a laptop

With an android phone

>a descent internet connection for streaming

Lots of free public WiFi spots and cafes

>available at any time of the day instantly

Why instantly? Uber-style, whoever is around

>ready to have a 2 minutes stupid conversation about anything random

Script it

Italki is pretty close... I know some people in my country who make some money this way.

You're right that nothing beats the convenience of the AI, but real people have other certain advantages.

The real upvote is to favorite a comment. Thanks, I am about to embark on learning Spanish. I’m going to talk to some people instead :)

Sounds like an opportunity to build a business?

Yes, there are also millions of lonely elderly who would love to speak to someone.

I led the entire engineering org for one such YC company that eventually became a unicorn: Papa (https://papa.com)

It would shock you how many elderly are so desperately lonely, and more so how a simple phone call would pick up their spirits. Pretty crazy.

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