this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2024
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Fuck AI
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All right all right, I get why this is kind of funny and perhaps it's potentially a bad sign for humanity.
But consider an adult who's learning the English language and is still at a basic level. If they want reading practice, they are often stuck with kids books. This would make practice a lot more interesting.
There are "simplified" books for learners already.
So this is nothing to worry about, then!
Except the simplified versions are made by humans who can preserve the flavor of the language and the important meanings, unlike this tool which is like replacing the Mona Lisa with text that says "woman sitting".
In English yes. But the less popular the language is, the less materials there are. With this you can take any book and simplify it to your level. Unlike mass-produced books, AI can be very flexible.
Unfortunately that popularity directly translates to the AIs ability to digest and paraphrase a book. LLMs have been trained on what is available in computer text format, which means mostly internet sources. English has an outsized presence on the internet compared the to actual number of native speakers, so there's magnitudes more training data for it than any other language. The models of other languages will be severely limited, if AI companies have spent the resources to train them at all.
There are many AI companies, including those that are based in countries where people communicate in other languages. What you are saying is not an insurmountable problem.
Yes it is insurmountable. There is not enough non-english text in the world to be able to train an LLM.
Now, 100% of books and all media is simplified and accessible to anybody who can get access to this tool
There are SOME uses for this, but I still suspect its just going to fuel the already piss literacy levels in the United States. Albeit, for people learning English as a second language this is a legitimate use-case imo
People reading more might actually make them better readers, Even if it's too simple for your standards!
I'm sure people are going to ask the AI "translate this text into a reading level that is just ahead of mine so I still improve"
Why not
Yes, the idea is good, I just don't trust AI to do a good job.
With the single example provided I’d say it did okay. Obviously in context that may change, but I don’t see this as much different from someone reading cliffs notes or something like blinkist.