Probably, I’m not the most familiar with nudging but it sounds like something that would describe it XD
nudging i learned about in the context of like how flashy cereals are displayed at kids eye height etc and stuff like that and how stores take advantage of decision fatigue to get you to buy stuff
1 Like
wow i do not type like i took philosophy this is embarrassing LMAO
I was literally going to bring this up as an example but I didn’t wanna be wrong. I feel like I just had my mind read that’s wild
1 Like
I just think it’s important to differentiate machine learning broadly from LLMs, and AI is a word heavily associated with LLMs (and stable diffusion models, which are based on similar principles).
Right now it’s good business for people to lump those all into the same bucket, but companies that specialize in other types of machine learning will soon be desperate to distance themselves from LLMs.
2 Likes
I personally don’t see the need for GenAI in Bunpro. While I’m sure people have various reasons for using Bunpro, at it’s core, it is a tool that provides high quality content written by native speakers, with the added perk of an SRS system. If you do a competitive analysis of what other tools are commonly used by Japanese language learners, the top tools are likely Anki, Wanikani, and Duolingo. Each of these has very obvious drawbacks (which I’m not going to get into because that’s a whole other topic). At least for me, Bunpro provides so much more value than these other apps because it has so much native written material and makes it easy to access that material in a customizable way. Adding in GenAI content would make me question the reliability of that material, and I think would actually make it stand out less in a crowd of competitors.
Another thing I don’t think anyone has mentioned yet is: why should the Bunpro team prioritize this over other features or general site maintenance? The Bunpro team is relatively very small. The past few years, they’ve been releasing a ton of new features such as Topics and Mock JLPT tests. Those features are great, don’t get me wrong, but you can already see how by them prioritizing those features, other content and updates have been pushed to the side. N1, A1, and A2 translations still haven’t been completely verified by staff, even though they were released close to two years ago. The A decks still aren’t accessible without a direct link. The Bunpro Summary sections and Hints still need to be updated for most levels. There are a ton of great quality of life improvements that have been suggested in the Feedback - Suggested Improvements/Feature Request thread. Randomly adding in GenAI tools just because it’s the popular thing right now would further take away resources from core areas of the site that still need to be worked on.
As others have mentioned, old school AI/ML is a different topic, but for GenAI at least I don’t see how integrating it into Bunpro would benefit me as a user. There are already readily available tools out there that people can use if they want to. I don’t need Bunpro to be an all encompassing tool that does everything, especially if it comes at the cost of quality and the team’s ability to maintain its existing content and features.
14 Likes
The reality is that, right now, there is not much that Bunpro offers that you can’t get elsewhere, or even for free.
Bunpro’s value comes from ease of use. The convenience that comes from having everything in one place with a slick interface and stat tracking.
All of which can be done, trivially, by AI. Bunpro is an easy bolt-on for anyone with a successful AI based language learning product. And when customers have to choose between Bunpro and Bunpro + other successful product, they’ll choose the combo pack every time, unless they’re a Luddite of some flavor.
I don’t really know what you expect for proof. We’re speculating about the future here. I’m sure the horse and buggy people were demanding proof that noisy, road reliant cars were going to displace quiet, road independent horses. But by the time it arrives, though, it’s too late. You’ve lost.
1 Like
This reminds me of my friend who was like, I don’t wanna buy a car. The second I buy a car I know im gonna be using it just to cross the street.
And I laughed, because it was funny, but also because he was right.
Sometimes there’s also a valuable reason not to take shortcuts, just because they’re there.
AI might be the future but I think people have brought up plenty of great reasons why it doesn’t need to be or shouldn’t be Bunpros future
11 Likes
I wouldn’t call AI a shortcut if you’re using it to bring valuable features that are meant to benefit people. I’m not sure what I have to say for people to stop assuming that the Bunpro team using AI means they would ship products that don’t work. They have even said they aren’t implementing it now because from their experience it isn’t up to the quality they would like at this time.
The only implementation of AI I think people who are asking for it are talking about is one that brings value and aid to the users and is what most people would consider useful overall. Nobody wants AI slop and half baked goods and I would be the first one to call out Bunpro if that’s what they made.
Similar to what someone brought up earlier Bunpro is a Business and it’s getting easier and easier for someone to build learning resources similar to Bunpro. They might not get to the same level in a weekend but give someone a year with those people also offering more features and possibly a faster path to learning and I don’t see it looking very good for Bunpro in the long run. There are Bunpro supporters who would stay regardless but I find it hard to believe that’s enough people to support the scale that they want to work at. Along with that I like using Bunpro and support the team and the goals they have but it would be hard to to switch to something else if it was a better learning tool.
It might not be today but I find it really very unlikely as the AI tools continue to get better and better for Bunpro to just ignore such useful and effective resources for the sake of AI = Bad. I understand the issues now but I think given a year or two those won’t really be around or at least not to the degree that they are now for things like GenAI.
Isn’t gen AI hitting a plateau due to lack of data?
I am not sure it will improve much more that where it is right now.
Also mostly all the other japanese app release lately tend to be rushed and vibecoded so I think Bunpro is safe for a while as it is a very niche product.
I am stil not sure how gen AI could be implemented but I am all for an SRS algo rework and a better way of drilling your weak point.
Though the team clearly said it’s not on their to do list for now so we have to wait and see how genAI evolve in 1 or 2 years and if it could finally be trusted without having to jump into hoops with prompting which is the biggest grudge I have with AI.
I never know if it’s telling the truth so I rather not loose time with it. I think apps entierly without AI can thrive just as photography and digital program didn’t kill traditional drawing.
But that’s just my 2 cents, I’ll be watching how the tech evolve and sadly all the bad way it’s implemented.
All the Citroen car in Europe come equipped with Chat GPT so you can talk to it while you drive or it can tell story to your kid in the back seat… yeah sure and of course there is no way out of it so it listen to you 100% of the time… great.
I hate the car industry.
6 Likes
LLMs are getting more not less expensive and are currently only as cheap as they are through massive subsidization. Per token rates which is what I assume BunPro would end up using can quickly get ruinous. Without a really strong use case (with measurable ROI) I really would hold off for now.
6 Likes
Early on, I gave it limits to the types of corrections it would make. At the very beginning, I told it I only wanted corrections that would limit the ability to understand what I’m saying at all. Then, as those mistakes dwindled, I eased it up.
If you think it doesn’t understand the context, you can ask if "x context’ would change it any, because Japanese is a very contextual language.
The evidence I’m curious about is any reason why AI will revolutionise language learning other than some thought of “AI is very powerful and revolutionary technology.”
Hypothetically, suppose AI was as good as the best Japanese teacher and it was a “teacher on demand.” It sure would be amazing, but that wouldn’t speed up language learning dramatically. We already have schools and teachers. And even then what would that add to Bunpro that would dramatically change Bunpro as a product? People will still need textbooks, flashcards and standard resources.
It’s simply incorrect to assume AI features will result in an extinction of previous learning techniques like cars were to the horse and cart. Certainly without any ideas of what would be so revolutionary.
6 Likes
The reason is that AI can adapt to what you specifically don’t understand better than basically any teacher. AI specifically is strong in the area that textbooks are most commonly criticized. “it isn’t clicking for me this way”
1 Like
AI can already do that as a separate product and it’s not clear what Bunpro integration would do to make that feature or Bunpro significantly better, let alone revolutionise language learning to the point of leaving everything else in the dust.
4 Likes
Bunpro has access to all of the data from your current learning so in theory you could build around hundreds or thousands of hours of reviews and history to work with the user in a way asking a separate model couldn’t. In the ideal situation you improve Bunpro by enabling users to get the help they need that can’t be provided by a textbook, without the cost of a tutor which is significantly higher than paying for Bunpro several times over.
Maybe for some people Bunpro is perfect and everything clicks and that’s fine and I don’t think anyone is trying to change Bunpro in a way that would change that experience at all but there are also a lot of people that still struggle to learn even with great tools like Bunpro. So I don’t think it’s such a bad thing to be able to help everyone out in a way that makes learning more enjoyable.
I don’t mind the idea of implementing AI in a way that makes it it’s own section Then if you are fine with using Bunpro as is you can continue and maybe there is another tab for the AI features that you never touch.
1 Like
I don’t see the point. Honestly if you want to add AI into Bunpro, with for example a “ask a question about this grammar point” you can easily build yourself a web extension, throw a Openrouter key and have a complete AI feature. I made a similar thing for another tool yesterday for jivx.com (writing practice) to ask follow up questions and the spend is so low it’s downright ridiculous, here’s for around 10 questions about “why so-and-so wouldn’t work in this sentence” or “why does this pattern uses this particle” etc etc:
Any serious AI can probably oneshot the task, or alternatively you can ask the LLM/agent what data it will need (probably one or two copy(document.outerHTML) of the website you’re working on.
Doing it this way sidesteps the sterile debate on whether it works, whether it is moral to use it, whatever culture war issues people-pattern match on, and people who do want it have it, and people who do not want it do not have it.
I highly recommend people to leverage the tools we have now to personalize and improve their own tools and workflows. There’s no reason to wait for the dev team to implement a new software feature if future compatibility is not an issue.
[edit: unbearable typo & somewhat ambiguous phrasing]
5 Likes
Imagine the AI translates “This is a pen” to このペンはあるです。” As someone who has literally 0 knowledge of Japanese, how would they know whether it’s right or wrong?
To me, when learning something with AI, you need to be, at minimum, just under the level of the question you’re asking, or you won’t be able to verify the results.
Thus, AI features take away from features that elevate people’s learning to a higher degree.
Side note, for those of you practicing politeness levels and sentence writing, use Google Docs or Microsoft Word. Its auto-correct is far more accurate than AI.
6 Likes
This doesn’t help me with negotiating politeness levels within 上下関係 tho just whether my sentence was grammatically correct 🥹
The only AI I care about in relation to Bunpro is Bunpro team’s 愛 for the platform. 
24 Likes