You are Internet King for the day, this is amazing! Not sure if there is a gyro keeping the seat stable and upright, didn’t seem necessary until he ended up on his butt when going too fast hahhahaha Love this!

When CoPilot showed up in my Word, I was writing a pitch doc that asked me to also describe whether I was using GenAI for anything for this pitch. It made me realize I didn’t know whether this doc was getting auto-pushed to CoPilot and would be used for training in some way. Dislike.

fyi, it's "Copilot"

Microsoft is evidentially bad at all forms of naming -- I have it on good authority that even (some) of their sales people think so (and will discretely admit to it).

There is a Duolingo for Music, worth a look! https://blog.duolingo.com/music-course/

I feel this as well, and increasingly as I get older. It drives me to simplify my office over and over, or at least add storage elements that can hide clutter. Our dystopian future visions for AR always include an extreme visual chaos of ads — maybe the killer app future for AR is actually to remove extraneous visual noise, much like noise-cancelling headphones.

Thanks for your comment back… I clicked on it for game market Steam as well, but I learned a few years ago that my great grandfather built some steam cars in Rochester around 1900, so I found this fascinating. Thanks!

How much less energy does a query against an 8B model take, vs a 70B model? Can we get more clever about using smaller, more specialized models?

NPR listener for 30 years and I'm having a similar reaction to many of you in this thread. For the first time, I'm finding myself turning off the radio once I'm awake.

It seems like Berliner breaking the rules (or norms) and throwing bombs by way of another media outlet was his last-ditch effort to break through and be heard. In that, at least, he's getting attention, and now let's hope it leads to change.

The examples he gave in the FP piece all seemed very political, focusing on not covering "the other side". Honestly I don't want any of that crap coming at me in the morning, I don't want "other side" coverage just like I don't want "my side" coverage. I can get that anywhere. I listen to NPR because I want good journalism, not both-sidesism. I hope this event can lead coverage back there. With the new CEO, perhaps there's an opportunity.

japanese!

Thanks for your great work on this! As with a number of other folks here, I too have been playing with using LLMs for language learning. Primarily I've been using the Voice Control for ChatGPT extension with custom GPTs, learning Japanese.

One of the things I notice right away about your app is that your learning arc is moving from saying simple things to saying complex things, as opposed to aligning with increasing grammatical complexity. One of the things Duolingo does well is start with simple verbs, simple nouns, then slowly introduce language complexity over time: new particles, new tenses, new grammatical structures, etc. So the learning arc follows the complexity of the grammar, not the complexity of what I'm trying to express. I'm not sure I'm communicating that well :-) But for Japanese, as an example, there is a series of proficiency tests that do a good job of laying out a rough learning arc, which makes it easier to scaffold someone in, meet them where they are, and then start building on the knowledge they already have. When I futz with LLMs it's largely been to box the LLM in at a particular language level and then use it to practice language concepts at that level: for example, use JLPT N4 vocab and grammar and let's have a conversation about my day at university using formal language. If there was some way to roughly align the Univerbal conversation against tiers in language learning and then help me progress along that arc, it would be even more valuable.

My actual expertise is in games for learning though, and I appreciate what I saw you doing with "goals" in the "meeting a new friend" stage. Gamification is primarily about engagement, keeping me motivated, keeping me involved, keeping me coming back. Duo does a ton of gamification and uses it to good effect even though I know it does drive some people bonkers. But am I about to break my 500-day streak? No I am not. Gamification works! :) With the capabilities that you already demonstrate you could probably walk closer to making it an actual game, if you wanted to: the primary difference being that you'd need to add learning elements in there beyond the suggestions you have now (which are great, btw). Think of the way Zelda teaches you a new control mechanic through the individual shrines and bosses (formative and summative assessment, essentially), and adds the control details to your options menu once you've learned them (like having a grammar guide or vocabulary list once you've demonstrated mastery). What your game would be would be something very different from Zelda, but... it is fun to think about!

Love what you're doing!

So happy to hear it. The closed-not-closed state of LCM was exasperating for several years and I know several groups of folks were trying to engage to bring it back to life. It was such a great site for informal learning and did a good job of highlighting the region's contributions to computing. Seattle needs a computer museum!