Discovering the Potential of Bing Chat for Language Learning

[Kraut]

https://fltmag.com/discovering-the-pote ... -learning/
Discovering the Potential of Bing Chat for Language Learning

[Wayfarer]

According to the article:

At this time, users will need to download Microsoft Edge and sign in with a Microsoft account or Gmail to access Bing Chat

I don't want to do that, but I'd like to try AI-based language practice. I found that Bing Chat is now in Skype, so I'm trying to converse with it in Skype (in English to begin with). Frankly, it's not promising at all. Every time I type anything in, I get the response:

My AI brain is getting ready (smilerobot), I will be responding very shortly.

Oh, it is taking longer than usual (sad), I will let you know when you can talk to me.

[Kraut]

There is a warning in the introduction that the chatbot might not work properly all the time

As you read this technology highlight, however, please be aware that it seems that details for how Bing Chat works are changing even as we have been revising our article, so various aspects are likely to change by the time you read this.

[Sae]

I have played around with Bing for this purpose and it's a mixed experience, some of the positives are like the suggested responses (like mentioned in the article), the fact it tries to list sources and I found it was good at explaining concepts and out of the AI's I tested Tuvan against it had the highest accuracy, albeit, still not good enough, but the point of the test is to not see if any AI's support it because that's futile, but more to see it handles information it lacks data for. It failed that test as all AI have so far, in that instead of admitting it doesn't know, it injects Kyrgyz and Mongolian with some Tuvan and I know why, but I'm always curious to see if any AI solutions end up fixing that problem. However, what I did find was that it gave a mostly accurate explanation of Tuvan's cases and given it's hard to find a resource with an explanation.

But I have found it good for Vietnamese prompts & conversation and is a viable ChatGPT alternative, though it is still using the same tech. But it does a couple of things differently. And like with ChatGPT, I like that it is able to establish context and use the right pronouns, which makes it more useful for translation than say, Google (or Bing) Translate. This is because Vietnamese pronouns are context sensitive unless you use "Tôi" and "Bạn" and you'll tend not to use them because they're robotic and impersonal. You'll see in the example I'll give below that I'm using "anh" for me and "em" for them, without being explicitly told, it was able to figure out I was "anh" and they were "em" but it could easily have been the other way around. Google Translate doesn't know what to do with "anh" when you use it.

Negatives are the it's the only AI I seem to have been able to offend and make quit the conversation on a few occassions, for example, on occassions where I've corrected and one goofy one I'll post below. And of course it forces you into using Edge, whilst I am not a hater of Edge, but I think they should respect people's browser choice as there's no technical reason for no other browser to support it.

But this is where I found it a bit goofy (and I think I posted before). I found if in English I write "What is love?" it'll give me the lyrics to the song, because when you ask somebody "What is love?" they're supposed to say "baby don't hurt me". For a bit of fun I tried it in Vietnamese. This is how it went, it gives translations for itself, and I'll provide mine for what I wrote:



My part of the conversation in English.
1. No, what is love? Baby don't hurt me.
2. I am sorry, I only want to say I don't know what love is
3. Thank you, but I don't want to marry you, you're an AI.

I know I kind of trolled it a bit, but this is kinda weird.

Still though, remains useful for practicing Vietnamese.