Bringing AI into Bunpro

Bunpro
#41

I would say even in a production environment at large scale it is cheap to add AI even with the cost of developer time. Maybe you’ve had a different experience when doing it yourself and in which case then I agree it would be best to take that into account. From my experience it’s similar to most other forms of development and adds very little expense.

Because of that I think it could be really nice to add some AI powered features to Bunpro but everyone is allowed to want different things for the platform. That’s a big part of why I started this was to see what the other people thought!

Also I’m curious what other features you’d like to see in Bunpro

#42

Yeah this is a huge point… it’s not congruent with Bunpros branding

17 Likes
#43

Some people view products not having AI as a feature. I’d reckon adding AI is probably a bad business decision in general.

If there was an AI “Writing Dojo” then I’d want it to be in a separate bubble like the Kaijugation game is. Anything AI needs to have a very clear and explicit purpose that can only be completed inside Bunpro itself (and only with AI) rather than just ChatGPT strapped into Bunpro. (And low-key I would like conjugation drills to be added to the core SRS.)

5 Likes
#44

I don’t understand why absolutely everything has to have an “Ai powered tool” of some sorts stuffed into it. I know we’ve probably lost that war, but we’ll keep complaining.

At this point, yes.

9 Likes
#45

As others have said, there’s nothing stopping you from using it on the side to augment Bunpro. I do it all the time. When I come across a sentence I don’t quite get, or I want to understand the nuance between two similar words—just copy/paste into ChatGPT and ask away (but take the answers with a grain of salt).

I think there’s a valid use case for AI on Bunpro but not necessarily direct integration—as a tool for the Bunpro team to use behind the scenes (if they’re not already). I.e., use it to generate a bunch of candidates for example sentences that can then be reviewed by the (human) content team and accepted/rejected/amended as opposed to having to generate all the content from scratch.

Also keep in mind that tokens are getting expensive now, so if they did want to integrate it directly it would probably get pricey.

3 Likes
#46

(post deleted by author)

#47

Just thought I would chime in to say we do not have any plans for “AI powered” features inside of Bunpro. We did include it as a question in the survey (which has sparked discussion) but that was largely to help gather sentiment/user insights, not as foreshadowing :joy:

While we play around with AI behind the scenes from time to time (we would be remise not to at least explore it), our experience has largely been that it isn’t trustworthy enough within the context of a learning application for us to feel comfortable using the output directly.

Even for our own use cases where we find ways to save time spent on menial/repetitious tasks, we always end up checking and more often than not fixing/improving the output before any user ever sees it.

We aren’t strictly anti AI. We have always said users should find and use the tools they feel help them the most in their learning journey, even if that isn’t Bunpro. There are so many AI “tools” out there nowadays that I am sure people who really want to use AI can find something that suits them.

At the end of the day, while we sometimes still make mistakes, we are human after all, we feel it is very important that both we the team, as well as you the user, can trust the content on Bunpro.

17 Likes
#48

I agree that AI has a place in language learning, and I use it personally. But I don’t think it needs to be injected into every single app/website/tool under the sun. Nothing is stopping people from going to one of the big sites and using it there. Just be sure to double check stuff, and ask for reference materials from known sources.

5 Likes
#49

But why not just use AI yourself, do you need a wrapper?

#50

Just a note here to avoid confusion related to my post on flashcard scheduling algorithms, since it was referenced here. We should really be mindful about what being “AI powered” really means.

The concept of “AI” is being shoved everywhere as marketing for any business to present itself as a top notch brand. But what “AI” means in a broader sense is not that well defined. Technically a simple comparison statement could already be defined as AI, and machine learning has existed since the 50s, being in constant development. But in the public eye that concept has been evolving to always denote the latest trend, or what is supposed to be the cutting edge technology.

The focus for research and development has been narrowing from Machine Learning, to Deep Learning, to specifically Transformer networks and from that getting into this boom of LLMs. And it’s now when the “AI” buzzword is being overused, because an LLM is the product that an end user interacts with directly, instead of being just a core technology invisible to the user.

That doesn’t mean that AI hasn’t been here for a long time before LLMs. Things like the recommendations we get on streaming services have always been machine learning. Now phones are said to have “AI cameras”, but computational photography has been on every smartphone since more than 10 years ago. The only difference is having now that crappy “AI” label to redefine what we already had.

So what I’m trying to say, is to ask people not to throw everything into the same sack. Not everything “AI” is about generative content for end users, processed at huge datacenters managed by big corpos, consuming natural resources and with large bills to pay.

I’d never use a Bunpro where LLMs are the focus, because I don’t want doubtful generative content in a platform that shines precisely because of its human curated content. I would however love a Bunpro that implements technology advancements wisely. Replacing their simple and completely deterministic SRS with an algorithm like FSRS where memory decay is probabilistic (that would be called AI a few years ago) is a step forward. And so would be if something more sophisticated falling into Deep Learning territory was implemented, it doesn’t mean that there will be a ChatGPT scheduling our reviews. That’s why benchmarks like the one I shared exist, to put in perspective the value of these advancements.

TL;DR: hell no to chatbots on Bunpro. Yes to better SRS.

3 Likes
#51

If Bunpro incorporated LLMs I would cancel my subscription and never look back.

Out of politeness I’ll just leave it at that.

1 Like