What's the most effective language for using AI?

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the effectiveness of different languages for prompting AI, referencing a study that ranks Polish as the most effective language. Participants explore various languages, their characteristics, and anecdotal experiences related to language learning and usage in AI contexts.

Discussion Character

  • Debate/contested
  • Exploratory
  • Conceptual clarification

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants cite a study claiming Polish is the most effective language for prompting AI, with English ranked sixth.
  • One participant questions the reasoning behind Polish's effectiveness, suggesting it may be less ambiguous than English.
  • Another participant humorously bets that Finnish is the least effective language, citing personal experiences with its complexity.
  • A participant mentions a BBC documentary about Daniel Tammet, who learned Icelandic quickly, as a related anecdote.
  • Another anecdote discusses a Scrabble champion who learned French in six weeks and won a championship, suggesting language learning can be highly variable.
  • Some participants express uncertainty about the inclusion of Finnish in the study, with one later confirming its presence and ranking it 18th out of 26 languages.
  • There is a light-hearted reference to the joke about Greek being difficult to learn, illustrating the subjective nature of language perception.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants express differing opinions on the effectiveness of various languages, with no consensus reached on which language is definitively the best or worst for AI prompting. The discussion remains open-ended with multiple competing views.

Contextual Notes

Participants reference a study without providing detailed methodology or criteria for effectiveness, leaving assumptions about language characteristics and their impact on AI prompting unresolved.

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Hah, I completely misunderstood this one. I was about to answer I heard Lisp was a popular (programming) language but just read that several LLMs seems to have been coded using Rust.

EDIT: Doesn't the OP's question technically belong in the linguistics forum? :woot:
 
Did they explain why Polish seemed better than the other languages ?

Is it less ambiguous than English?

Or maybe Reverse Polish notation? :-)
 
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I'm ready to bet Finnish is the worst!
 
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There was a BBC documentary on Daniel Tammet who could quickly learn languages. They put him to the test to learn Icelandic.

After the first week, his tutor said its not going well but by the second week Daniel was interviewed by Icelandic TV and spoke it fluently.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Tammet
 
The ~14 time world master of GB Scrabble decided for a challenge and studied French for six weeks and then won the French World Scrabble Championship.

I suspect he's on the autistic spectrum somewhere... and if it's a bell curve probably dead in the middle.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo...f-french-scrabble-title-does-not-speak-french

I remember him playing the word CHLORODYNE. With 7 letters. Against that you fight in vain.
 
sbrothy said:
I'm ready to bet Finnish is the worst!
I haven't seen the full list of languages that they tested, but I suspect they might have skipped Finnish. Besides studying it on my own for several years, I sat in on an intro Finnish course when I was in graduate school. The instructor joked that Finnish grammar has more rules than any other language... even the exceptions have rules!
 
Aha, now I see the Euronews article has a link to the original paper on arXiv. They did include Finnish. It was in 18th place (out of 26), according to Figure 4(b) on page 6. The Euronews article must have gotten its accuracy percentages by measuring off the bar chart in Figure 4(b). I don't see a table of them in the paper.
 
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jtbell said:
I haven't seen the full list of languages that they tested, but I suspect they might have skipped Finnish.
Once you learn Finnish, you're done...:biggrin:
 
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  • #11
I think it should be Greek in honor of the perennial joke:

I can speak any language except Greek. Why? Because it's all Greek to me.
 

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