After years with Grammarly, I wanted a simpler, cheaper way to improve my writing. So I built Scramble, a Chrome extension that uses an LLM for writing enhancements.
Key features:
- Uses your OpenAI API key (100% local)
- Pre-defined prompts for various improvements
- Highlight text and wait for suggestions
- Currently fixed to GPT-4-turbo
I don't think the point here should be the cost, but the fact that you are sending everything you write to OpenAI to train their models on your information. The option of a local model allows you to preserve the privacy of what you write.
I like that.
Assuming for the moment that they aren't saying that with their fingers crossed behind their back, that doesn't change the fact that they store the inputs they receive and swear they'll protect it (Paraphrasing from the Content section of the above link). Even if it's not fed back into the LLM, the fact that they store the inputs anywhere for a period of time is a huge privacy risk -- after all a breach is a matter of "when", not "if".
> Key features: - Uses your OpenAI API key (100% local)
Sorry, but we have a fundamental disagreement on terms here. Sending requests to OpenAI is not 100% local.
The OpenAI API is not free or open source. By your definition, if you used the Grammarly API for this extension it would be a 100% local, open source alternative to Grammarly too.
Without marketing speak can I ask why anyone would have a need for a service like grammerly, I always thought it was odd trying to sell a subscription based spell checker (AI is just a REALLY good spell checker).
Non-native speakers find it useful since it doesn't just fix spelling but also fixes correctness, directness, tone and tense. It gives you an indication of how your writing comes across, e.g. friendly, aggressive, assertive, polite.
English can be a very nuanced language - easy to learn, difficult to master. Grammarly helps with that.
I'm a big fan of Grammarly and have been using it, and paying for it, for years.
The advantage is not spell checking. It is grammar and style improvements. It tells you things like "this language is informal", or "this is a better word for that".
The "grammar" part, at least in a professional setting. You might be shocked at how many people will write an email pretty much like they would talk to friends at a club or send a text message (complete with emojis!) or just generally butcher professional correspondence.
It is widely used in countries where the professional language is English, but the native language of the speakers is not.
For example, most Slavic languages don't have the same definite/indefinite article system English does, which means that whilst someone could speak and write excellent English, the correct usage of "a" and "the" is a constant conscious struggle, where having a tool to check and correct your working is really useful. In Greek, word order is not so important. And so on.
Spell check usually just doesn't cut it, and when it does (say, in Word), it usually isn't universally available.
Personally, I have long wanted such a system for German, which I am not native in. Lucky for me DeepL launched a similar product with German support.
A recent example for me was that I was universally using "bekommen" as a literal translation of "receive" in all sentences where I needed that word. Through DeepL I learned that the more appropriate word in a bunch of contexts is "erhalten", which is the sort of thing that I would never have got from a spell check.
Makes sense. Strongly hope it won't be a "mac app" but a cross-platform application instead though, nothing worse than having a great mac app that you can't use 50% of the time because your work computer's a mac and your personal computer's a windows machine because you like playing games.
This is sad for the overall M&A market. Companies are going to be scared to enter into these agreements because it’s just a waste of time and money when it inevitably ends up like this.
The value accrues in the form of incentivizing new products and companies to enter the market. The two options these founders (and their investors) have to capitalize on building a good company is to either go public or get acquired.
Severely limiting the ability to be acquired reduces the incentives for new founders as well as investors in new companies if the only realistic path is waiting for them to go public. Especially since being acquired doesn't require you to be in nearly as good a financial position in terms of profit as going public does.
I can't think of a single time that was overall beneficial for the US in the last decade. A bunch of time sucking sites I don't consider life improving. It won't stop small business and it'll stop big companies from their shitty VC style squeeze everyone out of the market tactic? I don't mind losing that 'value'.
However, product innovation doesn't happen without competition. Acquisitions aren't necessarily bad, but a company being bought by a competitor with a similar product lessens competition and can lead to less innovation.
While I agree that this deal was ultimately bad for consumers, weaker M&A markets, in the long run, may hurt consumers equally as bad. A lot of “copycat” companies get created when they see a particular company doing well. While sheer profitability is the major factor in this, M&A, and the likelihood of a liquidity event play a large role here too.
Hopefully future us won’t look back at this deal as the beginning of a weak M&A market
There’s a bigger picture than just the consumer. If there is not a chance to exit then founders won’t be incentivized to create these companies and employees won’t be incentivized to join or stay at these companies. If M&A markets are limited then the only option is IPO which goes through major cycles and probably can’t support the number of companies needed. Plus many companies can’t get big enough to IPO.
Is this true? I assume there must be founders who won't start companies if they can't get acquired, but I'm not one of them. And I think my closest friends aren't either.
Do companies like YouTube and Instagram get started and funded less frequently if the climate evolves to “it’s impossible to have large mergers approved”?
It’s a bit like asking in 2009 if the secondary mortgage market is a valuable market worth having. It provides significant good (IMO) to support real estate transactions.
But, I don't think that YouTube or Instagram are an inherent moral requirement for society, so I don't think it's the end of the world if they never existed.
It's sad for the bad part of the M&A market that is against competition. there's tons of good M&A that will still get approved. it's not bad that companies need to think twice and consider anti-trust before getting deals done
With the advent of AI, a substantial portion of the laborious tasks involved in the 3-tier model will likely be automated, making it less likely for most to move away from this approach. In my opinion, the 3-tier pattern was established for valid reasons, and any attempts to simplify it by removing tiers might inadvertently constrain developers, leading them to eventually revert back to the original model.
Regarding solo projects, I agree that simpler stacks like BaaS or other innovations can be sufficient. However, fast-scaling companies often require the unparalleled flexibility and customizations offered by an in-house 3-tier model. This tailored approach ensures they can effectively meet the evolving demands of their growing operations.
I don't have a Samsung OS (other than a phone) but it is possible to specify where on a screen a subtitle appears. I've noticed it happening with some shows where they have them high up so they don't block the credits but then go back down later.
I’ve worked on a few support sites for companies over the years. In all my research I found >40% of customers never look for the answer before contacting support. That’s why you’ll see sites add a bunch of questions with recommendations to answers based on your description before you can contact support. Even AWS support does this.
Bots may be annoying but they can also save the company tons in custer support costs. I’m for it if the UX is good and I can quickly contact an agent if the bot can’t answer my question. This is assuming the bot won’t hallucinate and just tell me random fake facts.
I can't think of a single time where a customer support bot was ever useful. Not one. They're incredibly annoying and I categorically avoid them these days. At least companies should make it clear that their bot basically just links to the FAQ, then the rest of us don't have to waste our time.
I can. Chipotle screwed up my order. Their support thing sent me to a chat bot that had me select which items were missing and I was able to get through the process of getting refunded quickly.
Similarly Amazon’s chat bot has helped me straighten out a few messed up deliveries.
This isn’t to say that it wouldn’t have been easier to have a point and click UI where I could just select all this on my own, but the way they had it set up wasn’t bad.
Here’s the kicker: when I recently had an Amazon delivery problem I started with the chat bot but then relatively seamlessly transitioned to talking to a human. The human was very quickly able to pick up on the situation and fix it.
This is because the tools that CX teams have been provided by companies like Zendesk or Intercom are no more then IFTTT widgets. These tools are rigid and scream RTFM because they’re incapable of taking action or providing anything specialized to your situation.
What you want is to be understood and treated like you’re a human with unique needs. You need someone or something to look up your account data, listen, and to act based on your situation. The current tools were never built for this.
The next generation of these CX tools will deliver this. Here are ways that they will be dramatically better for customers and companies:
- They will learn from successful interactions in the past and mirror those outcomes
- Handle customer interactions based on company policies such as escalating bugs
- They will surface new insights for the company
- Won’t hallucinate
When you watch any CX agent do their job you’ll witness them utilizing 4-5 SaaS applications to get a simple answer for a customer. The hurdle to adopt Generative AI in a company will require that companies care to build read/write APIs for these tools to utilize.
I asked my bank's chatbot if it was an LLM, and it responded with "I'll do my best to help you." The next time I talked to it I told it to go get me a human and it said it would find a human... then put me through a questionnaire before telling me to call the main support line. sigh
That said, and wow I feel like a shill for saying this, I've taken to asking the new GPT4-driven Bing random questions instead of web searching and damn if it's not doing a scarily good job. I'd do this before (ever since I got access) and it started out very interesting and then got rapidly very mediocre, but since the upgrade... it's like being able to talk to The Internet except it's friendly.
Agree most are crap. But they are getting better. With the ramp up of embeddings, the data they have access to is more useful and with LLMs they can provide you with plain English answers that are customized for you. Good example: look at what the Supabase docs can do. Not a chat bot but demonstrates the capabilities.
I had one with Amazon once. I was just getting a refund - it did it without any hassle and probably faster than a human. I was super happy - and this was like 2-3 years ago.
And for sufficiently well documented and complicated products, like Stripe, a chatbot is actually a great addon. You just need to set expectations that it’ll only be 99% correct.
You make the mistake of thinking people are all the same and don’t respond to incentives.
I automatically call certain companies rather than try to use their website because get this their website sucks. If I encounter any automated chat support, I will stop using the website and call a person.
I went from 10 years ago doing everything online myself, to now calling by default calling almost every company, because companies and their websites now universally suck. Because they’ve made the foolish mistake of thinking people are all the same and don’t respond to incentives. Some companies are better, I will give my business to them when I have a choice.
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