Chatbot language learning

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sfuqua
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Chatbot language learning

Postby sfuqua » Fri Mar 17, 2023 6:07 pm

If I am starting a redundant thread, I'm sorry, but I would like to know what experiences people are having interacting with chatbots in various languages. This whole area is moving extremely quickly and new resources are appearing daily. What are your experiences and what resources have you found?

I tried to set up a bot to chat with in Spanish using https://dataconomy.com/2022/10/what-is-chai-app-how-to-talk-ai-chatbots/ This bot allows one to program the bot to a limited extent. I created María, a bot simulating a female from Puerto Rico. She was programmed to be a friend who is trying to help me practice speaking Spanish.

Chai has been programmed for conversation, so in many ways it is more satisfying to chat with than a big beast like ChatGPT. ChatGPT seems, to me, to answer questions well, but a chatbot will talk and ask questions, which is better practice than just reading answers to questions.

María started of using extremely flowery Spanish that was harder to understand than the average person I have chatted with on the Internet. The next time I chatted with her, her language was much more normal. I tweaked her prompt in between, and maybe I fixed something. :D

I wonder if chatbots originally programmed in Spanish would be better. It is a big world, full of smart people, and it would be great to find a bot to talk to in each of my languages.
I don't like depending on language exchange partners, and I hate having them depend on me. I don't mind inconveniencing a bot... :lol:

Duolingo's AI doesn't look that interesting to me yet. I would rather struggle to communicate rather than speak and get corrected. :o

Is anybody else fooling around with chatbots? :D
Last edited by sfuqua on Sat Mar 18, 2023 12:13 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Chatbot language learning

Postby Sae » Fri Mar 17, 2023 8:09 pm

I have yet to try Chai myself. I did have a spout of experimentign with ChatGPT and found maybe it was only useful for one of my target languages.

I have been tempted to look at AI's you can pass in your own data to train. I guess I think I would be able to get better used out of AI if I can train it one what I need it for.

But I was planning to give Bing's AI some toying. I have already thrown some prompts at it. And I was curious how it'd handle Tuvan, like I did with ChatGPT, because I want to see how they handle information they're unlikely trained on (or have much training on), in ChatGPT's case it always gives me false responses. With Bing, my first response was incorrect, but the second it changed its search midway and it made clear that it was looking for answers in Turkic languages instead and it's response was basically, "I couldn't find this in Tuvan, but I found answers in other Turkic languages that may be similar".
And it looks like Bing tries to provide you sources too.
So it looks like they try to be transparent, but I think with things it's less likely to know to take its responses with a pinch of salt.


Oh and I think I broke it:

Image
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Re: Chatbot language learning

Postby Cainntear » Fri Mar 17, 2023 8:23 pm

I've seen a couple of apps that act off the back of GPT-3. ChatGPT was an app built around a back-end called GPT-3.5 .

The launch of GPT-4 means that language apps can use the same text generation engine as ChatGPT in their own apps. This grants the app developer a lot of control over the AI that they wouldn't have in ChatGPT.

I think that AI chat offers an intriguing possibility: in my CELTA course, there was a big think made between "accuracy" goals and "fluency" goals, and I always thought that fluency was a bit of a cop-out when teacher time was so limited. AI can do accuracy because it's designed to assume that anything it doesn't quite understand is its own fault, and to hide the misunderstanding the best it can. This means it can do fluency practice really well, because you just natter away for as long as you want and it doesn't notice your mistakes.
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Re: Chatbot language learning

Postby tastyonions » Fri Mar 17, 2023 8:38 pm

One thing about using ChatGPT for corrections is that it will sometimes give the right correction but give a bogus or vague justification for it, or even "correct" something that was right. For example, I just tested it out by sending it simple French mistakes:
Me: Si je vous envoie des messages en français, pouvez-vous les corriger ?

GPT: Oui, bien sûr ! Je peux comprendre et corriger des messages en français. N'hésitez pas à m'envoyer vos messages et je ferai de mon mieux pour les corriger.

Me: Je suis né en Canada en 1984.

GPT: Je suis né au Canada en 1984.
Note : "en" est utilisé pour indiquer une période de temps, mais dans ce contexte, il est plus approprié d'utiliser "au" pour indiquer le lieu de naissance. [It's irrelevant that "en" is used to refer to a time period; what I wrote was wrong because "le Canada" is masculine and takes "au."]

Me: Je suis allé voir mon ami et je lui ait montré les photos que j'ai pris pendant mes vacances en Méxique.

GPT: Je suis allé voir mon ami et je lui ai montré les photos que j'ai prises pendant mes vacances au Mexique.
Note : "pris" doit être accordé en genre et en nombre avec "photos", qui est féminin pluriel. Et il faut écrire "Mexique" avec une majuscule. [Mexique is already capitalized. The error (among others) was the acute accent on the first "e."]

It's only getting better, though. Wonder how long before kinks like these disappear.
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Re: Chatbot language learning

Postby Sae » Sat Mar 18, 2023 1:19 am

Bing I think could be a contender for helping with Mongolian, where ChatGPT felt iffy. I will give Bing some credit too, because Bing Translate, unlike Google Translate will offer translations in Mongolian script and not just Cyrillic. So it may be that Microsoft has been more inclined to feed it on Mongolian more.

First I've given it simple stuff, and the AI keeps the conversation going whilst understanding me completely.

Image

Then I gave it a wall of text, the only 'error' I can spot is I put "I want to cook Mongolian food" but it translated it as "I cook Mongolian food" but there is every possibility that it's me and not the AI.

Image

And finally, this is what ChatGPT kind of screwed the pooch, so I thought I would try this with Bing:

Image

What I find interesting is that it also gives me suggested questions to ask (like in this one it suggested "Can you explain some of the words or grammar in this dialogue?" which i used). I cannot 100% verify all of this accurate, but everything I know/reccognise is.

What I like is that it is following up with some useful prompts to respond to (I did give it the premise of helping me with my Mongolian at the start) and the fact it translates things back to me I think is good to assessing whether what I said is what I meant to say.

It's translations of what I've written are also better than Google Translate's.



So I think it kind of shows, it's worth shopping around in terms of AI's. I might use Bing for prompts & practice conversation.
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Re: Chatbot language learning

Postby battlegirl » Sat Mar 18, 2023 7:09 am

I've only dabbled with ChatGPT so far. And have been testing it in English to see its accuracy before I trust it to teach me wrong things in other languages. It hasn't performed flawlessly.

Someone has told me that it's the wording of the prompt that is part of the problem. They went so far as to say they think "prompt engineer" is the new job of the future...! I can totally see that.

Here is one interaction I saved that would have created some confusion had I been a student trying to understand the grammar structure of wish + past simple (as in "I wish I were rich", and not "I wish I had invested in Apple when I was young.") :

Me: can you give me three examples of sentences that use the structure "I wish" plus the past simple

ChatGPT: Sure, here are three examples of sentences using the structure "I wish" followed by the past simple:

"I wish I had studied harder for the exam yesterday."
"I wish I had known about the traffic jam before leaving the house this morning."
"I wish I had taken the job offer when it was presented to me last year."

In each of these sentences, the speaker is expressing regret or a desire for something that they did not do or experience in the past.

Me: not the past perfect. the past simple

ChatGPT: Apologies for misunderstanding your question earlier. Here are three examples of sentences using the structure "I wish" followed by the past simple:

"I wish I knew how to swim when I was younger."
"I wish I went to that concert last night; I heard it was amazing."
"I wish I realized earlier how important it is to take care of my health."

In these examples, the speaker is expressing a regret or desire for something that they didn't do or experience in the past, using the past simple tense.
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Re: Chatbot language learning

Postby Cainntear » Sat Mar 18, 2023 8:00 am

Sae wrote:Bing I think could be a contender for helping with Mongolian, where ChatGPT felt iffy. I will give Bing some credit too, because Bing Translate, unlike Google Translate will offer translations in Mongolian script and not just Cyrillic. So it may be that Microsoft has been more inclined to feed it on Mongolian more.

Were you using Edge as your browser? When did you run the examples?

Bing uses OpenAIs work, and OpenAI launched GPT-4 a few days ago, which Bing only uses if you access it from a Microsoft Edge web browser (ah, does this qualify as the return of the "embrace, extend, extinguish" policy...?)

What you're seeing could be just the difference between the GPT-3 engine (*) used in ChatGPT and the new GPT4 engine. That said, app writers do get to control and constrain the language engine differently, so Bing might well be doing it differently.

(* I read it described as "GPT-3.5", as it was allegedly an updated GPT-3 that wasn't available to app developers and the only app using it was ChatGPT. I now suspect that decision was because the GPT-4 launched was already being secretly planned and they didn't want to put people into an upgrade frenzy for an engine that had a 4 month lifespan.)
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Re: Chatbot language learning

Postby Sae » Sat Mar 18, 2023 10:22 am

Cainntear wrote:
Sae wrote:Bing I think could be a contender for helping with Mongolian, where ChatGPT felt iffy. I will give Bing some credit too, because Bing Translate, unlike Google Translate will offer translations in Mongolian script and not just Cyrillic. So it may be that Microsoft has been more inclined to feed it on Mongolian more.

Were you using Edge as your browser? When did you run the examples?

Bing uses OpenAIs work, and OpenAI launched GPT-4 a few days ago, which Bing only uses if you access it from a Microsoft Edge web browser (ah, does this qualify as the return of the "embrace, extend, extinguish" policy...?)

What you're seeing could be just the difference between the GPT-3 engine (*) used in ChatGPT and the new GPT4 engine. That said, app writers do get to control and constrain the language engine differently, so Bing might well be doing it differently.

(* I read it described as "GPT-3.5", as it was allegedly an updated GPT-3 that wasn't available to app developers and the only app using it was ChatGPT. I now suspect that decision was because the GPT-4 launched was already being secretly planned and they didn't want to put people into an upgrade frenzy for an engine that had a 4 month lifespan.)



Yeah I used Edge and I ran the examples last night. I didn't know a new version of ChatGPT had gone out, so you may be right, perhaps I'll throw the same questions at it and see. I do know you can provide custom training data when you use its API. But I can test it to be sure.
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Re: Chatbot language learning

Postby Kraut » Sat Mar 18, 2023 11:04 am

battlegirl wrote:
Here is one interaction I saved that would have created some confusion had I been a student trying to understand the grammar structure of wish + past simple (as in "I wish I were rich", and not "I wish I had invested in Apple when I was young.") :

Me: can you give me three examples of sentences that use the structure "I wish" plus the past simple

ChatGPT: Sure, here are three examples of sentences using the structure "I wish" followed by the past simple:

"I wish I had studied harder for the exam yesterday."
"I wish I had known about the traffic jam before leaving the house this morning."
"I wish I had taken the job offer when it was presented to me last year."

In each of these sentences, the speaker is expressing regret or a desire for something that they did not do or experience in the past.

Me: not the past perfect. the past simple

ChatGPT: Apologies for misunderstanding your question earlier. Here are three examples of sentences using the structure "I wish" followed by the past simple:

"I wish I knew how to swim when I was younger."
"I wish I went to that concert last night; I heard it was amazing."
"I wish I realized earlier how important it is to take care of my health."

In these examples, the speaker is expressing a regret or desire for something that they didn't do or experience in the past, using the past simple tense.



The verb after “wish” is one tense back, so that if you are wishing for a different present situation, the tense that follows “wish” is past simple or past continuous. If you are wishing that a past situation was different, the tense that comes after “wish” is past perfect.

https://www.eslbase.com/grammar/wish
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Re: Chatbot language learning

Postby Sae » Sat Mar 18, 2023 11:43 am

Sae wrote:
Cainntear wrote:
Sae wrote:Bing I think could be a contender for helping with Mongolian, where ChatGPT felt iffy. I will give Bing some credit too, because Bing Translate, unlike Google Translate will offer translations in Mongolian script and not just Cyrillic. So it may be that Microsoft has been more inclined to feed it on Mongolian more.

Were you using Edge as your browser? When did you run the examples?

Bing uses OpenAIs work, and OpenAI launched GPT-4 a few days ago, which Bing only uses if you access it from a Microsoft Edge web browser (ah, does this qualify as the return of the "embrace, extend, extinguish" policy...?)

What you're seeing could be just the difference between the GPT-3 engine (*) used in ChatGPT and the new GPT4 engine. That said, app writers do get to control and constrain the language engine differently, so Bing might well be doing it differently.

(* I read it described as "GPT-3.5", as it was allegedly an updated GPT-3 that wasn't available to app developers and the only app using it was ChatGPT. I now suspect that decision was because the GPT-4 launched was already being secretly planned and they didn't want to put people into an upgrade frenzy for an engine that had a 4 month lifespan.)



Yeah I used Edge and I ran the examples last night. I didn't know a new version of ChatGPT had gone out, so you may be right, perhaps I'll throw the same questions at it and see. I do know you can provide custom training data when you use its API. But I can test it to be sure.


And I followed up with ChatGPT. It does seem to handle Mongolian better now. Their default approaches are different, but I know you can be more specific to get them to take the same approaches, but Bing by default seems to repeat translations of what you have said and gives discussion points and prompts in English, whereas ChatGPT just continues the conversation in Mongolian. But as you can instruct both to do both they're not really advantageous to each other there.

But at least with ChatGPT my conversations are saved, which is a shame Bing doesn't seem to, but maybe something they'll add. But a couple of things like I like about Bing so far is that it provides useful links where it seems appropriate (I suppose it makes sense as it is an AI driven search engine too) but it also gives you suggestions on what to follow up with, which I think have potential to be useful when practicing:

Image

[edit]

And just as I post...I spotted some inaccuracies in ChatGPT's translations:

It translates "морин хуур" as "flute", but it's "Morin Khuur", which is the actual name of the instrument and Google Translate tends to go with "fiddle" which at least is technically true as it is a type of fiddle but Bing's AI correctly translates this.

It translates "унтах" as "to hike" but it's "to sleep", which Bing correctly translates. And it also trips up on the same sentence Bing did, so that's probably more my fault than the AI's.

However, I suspect maybe Microsoft has incorporated Bing Translate in there.
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