As someone learning a second language as an adult, AI is an extremely interesting subject when it comes to this topic. We now have pretty good proof that LLMs a

As someone learning a second language as an adult, AI is an extremely interesting subject when it comes to this topic. We now have pretty good proof that LLMs are really good at having plausible conversations. The grammar is usually correct even if the content of the sentence is completely false. As a learner, this is great! I have an unlimited amount of access to novel stories and conversations with just a few prompts. When your business is focused on generating these interesting learning materials though, it’s completely against the interests of the employees currently creating this content. Duolingo does not need super articulate, Shakespearean levels of storytelling. Even today, go to any language learning subreddit, and goin back years, the sentences and stories on duolingo are sometimes comedically bad in terms of real world use and grammatical efficacy. It’s tough. I feel for the employees at these companies, but at the same time, to learn effectively, you need an insane amount of material at a very specific skill level. Generating this content is not easy for humans, but it’s almost effortless for an LLM. “Here’s a list of 2k words; write a story at an A2 level about this topic using past, present, and future tenses.” This is what this technology was designed to do. Interesting times!