Ask HN: Is anyone using AI conversation partners? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is anyone using AI conversation partners?

22 pointsrickcarlino35 comments

I'm obsessed with applying LLMs to language learning software. One thing I am not-so-obsessed with is a wave of conversational chat apps that many startups have begun offering. Having tried them myself, I find them to be quite bland ("Tell me about your day!" ) and often use a speech style that uses direct translation of English phrases into the target language.

I see plenty of potential for LLMs in this space, but the conversation bots I have seen so far are too open-ended and seem half baked.

For users: Is anyone finding these tools helpful?

For the people building them: Are people actually returning to the product?

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The ChatGPT mobile app in voice conversation mode works quite well for language practice with one important call-out: you have to give it a topic at the beginning otherwise it won't be able to drive the conversation forward and will stick to banal pleasantries.

So what I usually do is pick a random blurb in the news and paste the entire thing along with the Reuters link at the beginning and inform chatgpt that we'll be carrying on language practice specifically over that topic of discussion.

I've used this to carry an hour long foreign language practice in Spanish while walking my dog without even needing to look at my phone.

I had a prompt for this. It works perfectly well, but its not sticky or engaging enough somehow. I think if you could interact with other real people, or if it interacted with a game engine somehow (i'm thinking something like Myst) and there was world persistence it would be more engaging. In the chat I bought some train tickets and got a haircut before I got bored, and haven't resumed the "quest".

[1]you are an interactive storyteller, but your objective is to teach me German, you need to create an interactive text environment like a "choose your own adventure" book, if i answer in German, then correct my German and proceed, if I answer in english then translate to German and proceed. The storyline starts with me arriving in Germany as a study abroad student, all other communication should be in German

One of my first character cards, a Latin tutor, was modeled after Father Reginald Foster.

It was overly ambitious for the foundational models at the time, even more so for any small enough for local use prior to quantization, but I think any premier reasoning model today would work well enough.

For very popular languages: there are tons of human-made content specific for language learning, which is always far better than what any LLM can offer.

For low resource / endangered languages: LLMs still suck.

So no, I don't see the point of this beyond being cheap to produce and cheap to consume.

No, and even if they could perfectly replicate human speech patterns w/ long memories why would I want that? Why do you want fake "AI" friends? I find that very sad...

I wouldn't consider them "friends" but it is still useful to have a conversation partner in many situations. For example – if you can't afford to pay a language tutor $15-20 for a lesson. Or you want some feedback on an idea but don't know any experts personally to look it over.

I have honestly just been using ChatGPT itself. It is devastatingly good for written language learning and I suspect it is only a matter of time before it is that good for verbal needs.

What do you think is lacking in OpenAI voice?

Just the latency and naturalness of the conversation. Then again, I haven’t tried it for a month, so perhaps it is time to try again.

I wish they didn't take out the "off the screen" outputs from the previous voice mode. I miss being able to ask it to output an image or codeblock when I wanted to come back to something later.

The random shrieks and noises that come up are something else. Those are wild when you encounter them.

"Verbal needs" aren't a thing- interpersonal contact, friendship, those are real things that can't be replaced by talking to a smart fridge.

The comment you're replying to is talking about the need to actually speak a language to learn it fully (as opposed to just reading/writing), which could definitely be fulfilled by talking to a smart fridge.

They're not saying that the fridge is able to replace human relationships generally.

Actually, I did see one really cool use case. A guy was using a chatbot to help him revise for his uni courses. Not just chatting for the sake of it, but actually learning. It was super fluid and the whole thing was way sharper than the usual “how was your day?” stuff.

Wish I could remember the name of the app, if anyone knows it, let me know !

An alternative to consider: https://seikai.tv -- it's only for Japanese and a pet project -- totally free! I use a bunch of AI to handle the translating but don't offer any chat stuff.

Am I using them: No.

Do I find these tools helpful?

How would a bot that has no impact on the world itself be useful? The only thing it could affect would be me. Which is less useful than everything non-bot that I can talk to (i.e. people), since people can both impact the world and affect me anyway.

The OP is asking with respect to language learning and practicing conversation.

LLMs for writing can be far better than a tutor in a high-resource language like English, Mandarin, and Japanese, because they are familiar with many modalities and registers in these languages, and are willing to engage in you in them all.

They can impact you more and more cheaply than language lessons in a classroom (you still need IRL for practicing spoken dimensions)

To be honest, nothing beats practising with a real person. Maybe you could instead build a new and cooler way to have short chats with random people from different languages instead, which would be much better than interacting with a soulless piece of tech.

I’m curious if you can check the app I’m working on to see if it has the same issue. I tried to make it less open ended with specific goals you need to achieve in conversation. (Shameless plug: fluent.im)

Is there anyone currently capable of developing an AI soulmate, where conversations aren’t dull and boring? It could truly understand you, know your past, and even anticipate your future.

> Is there anyone currently capable of developing an AI soulmate

I believe there is. Here is a video from yesterday about Chai, which supposedly has 10M active users [0]. Title changed from 'Chatbot platforms might replace social media' to 'Chatbots are becoming virtual reality [Sponsored]' in the meantime. The video is about how they experiment with models and metrics rather than actual user experience, but I guess they deliver on 'capable of developing an AI soulmate' front.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILZ45sxon-4

I just built a conversational AI and tried it - me talking to Santa. I find the experience quite a pleasant surprise!

If you'd like to try, send me an email.

I made a phone-based one to teach me how to cold call because I fucking hate cold calling but needed to learn to sell

Would love to see a blog about your approach and the results.

You are wasting your time, selling is about interpersonal confidence- something an algorithm that scrolls the internet can't teach you.

Isn’t increased confidence a function of practicing the thing you want to feel more confident about?

Lots of potential, but also a big risk of OpenAI/Anthropic/Google releasing an update in 6 months that will kill your product.

I’m not sure I follow. What is the use-case for an “AI conversation partner”? Does it do something else than what ChatGPT already does?

I use ChatGPT and grok voice multiple times per week. There is nothing those 2 combined cannot do.

Given the work to deliberately introduce right-wing bias and talking points into Grok, I don't think I would feel comfortable using it for any reason, but particularly for a "conversational partner".

So far it seems like their desire to do that and their incompetence have canceled each other out.

I've been using Superfluent to help learn Spanish and have found it helpful.

My wife says chatgpt is her best friend

I need to talk

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