I’m also working on learning Nepali which is hard as far as language apps go because none of the apps take on smaller languages like this. I’m hoping this will change with LLMs in the mix. My experience (and that of my Nepali friends) is that ChatGPT’s written and spoken Nepali language skill is too-notch.

Some of the problem is due to the specificity of the training effect. I.e., if you mostly practice something through flash cards then you’re going to be training your ability to work with that on flash cards.

With language, there’s an additional challenge—many if not most words have different meanings in different contexts.

OpenAI is a technology company constantly in search of productization (ChatGPT, Sora, Dall-e), and they’ve been really good at creating product interest that converts to acquisition. An IDE is much more complex than a chat app, but given their literal billions of dollars and familiarity with developer tooling, this is a down-stack build that they could dogfood off their own tech. And especially given that some of these tools were built by tiny teams (Cursor is what, 10 people?), is this like Google and Facebook’s implicit admission that they can’t “build and grow” anymore, and need to turn to acquisitions to fuel growth?