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An AI app that generates quizzes from a photograph of a texbook
- sjroot 9y agoOP, I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you are Taichi Kato? If not, I'm assuming he, Arya, and Khush will read this discussion. The three of you should be very proud of yourselves. This is a really cool, novel idea! The fact that you all are sophomores in high school is very impressive too. Continue to follow your passions and you will surely be very successful.
- Zolomon 9y agoAre you legally allowed to copy the contents of these textbooks? If I recall there is often on the first page of textbooks long legal texts which prohibits copying of any kind without written consent from the authors.
- taixhi 9y agoWhat our algorithm does is, we convolute the text from the textbooks to create questions such as "How did Hitler die?" from texts like "In August 1945, Hitler killed himself." from the textbook. So usually, that ends up being significantly different to the original texts in the textbook.
- LeanderK 9y agoI don't know how you are doing this, but with NNs there's still be the chance that result contains significant parts of the text-books. I am not a lawyer, but because you are only interested in the syntactic equality (the sematic being the same) i think a simple algorithm like something based on edit-distance may be able to exclude such cases.
- fncypants 9y agoCopyright laws typically prohibit both identical copies, which appear to be done here by users during image processing / OCR even if only transitory, as well as derivatives of the copy. So the question then becomes, is this "fair use"? If the use case for the app is personal use by the possessors of the textbook, very likely no problem. For all other uses you should consult a lawyer to make sure you're in the clear.
- tylerhou 9y ago> as well as derivatives of the copy Shouldn't this imply that it's illegal for me to make quizzes on my own from information I found in a textbook? If this app is implemented correctly, what it does should be indistinguishable from a human. It makes no sense to change the infringement status of a work based on how the work was produced. Also, generally hard facts (like when Hitler died or how Hitler killed himself) are not copyrightable.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Cthulhu_ 9y agoIIRC and IANAL, but, copyright laws are about reproducing text, e.g. taking this text and republishing it without consent of the copyright holder. In this case that does not apply; while the app does copy the text (and possibly sends it to their servers), this text is not republished.
- spaceribs 9y agoI don't think it's copying verbatim, it might be caching it for a short while but not saving it (based on what I'm reading about the technology). So the more interesting question here: is a computer legally allowed to generate an original interpretation of text on a page?
- wccrawford 9y agoThe user of the app is still copying the text verbatim and transferring it to the server, which is distributing.
- atomicnumber1 9y agoNot exactly. A. They probably cache only for a little while B. They aren't republishing it
- wccrawford 9y agoThe company isn't. The user is still distributing.
- bluGill 9y agoCopyright law apples, not the first page legal looking text. They can make any claims they want to on the first page, but that has no legal standing in court. This quiz almost undoubtedly fall under fair use. Of course if you need legal advice you need to consult a lawyer.
- Infinitesimus 9y agoThis is fantastic. Congrats to the team! Education is an area that is still behind on using tech to dramatically improve the learning process so I'm very excited to see more work in this area. [Tangent] I was looking into doing something similar for a side project and got discouraged by my lack of a strong ML background. This is both great work and inspirational. Time to go dust off that repo..
- sdrothrock 9y agoThis made me think of the Norwegian news site that required readers to take a quiz before commenting: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/nrk-norwegian-news-site-comments-read-story-understand-post-quiz-questions-a7607246.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/ne... Combining these two ideas could be really neat -- I wonder if it could even be sold as a service a la disqus.
- OrganicMSG 9y agoHah, I was going to post the same thing. Perhaps it is steam-engine-time for this idea.
- maxxxxx 9y agoGreat idea! I am very guilty of commenting here without reading the article. Can we try this here?
- V-2 9y agoThe idea would combine nicely with voting in the elections, too - given a casted vote has more impact than leaving a comment under a news article ;)
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- astro_robot 9y agoWow! I love this idea. Congratulations! One question I have is what are you doing with the textbook pictures? Also, does the user categorize where the pictures came from so other people studying the same text can have additional questions?
- mratzloff 9y agoWhat kinds of questions would be generated for the Hitler Reichstag fire example?
- duolol 9y agoGreat idea! Congrats! I have bad experiences with google translate, but this seems like a simpler problem waiting to be solved. Can you share any information of the percentage of question/answers that are generated correctly?
- wemdyjreichert 9y agoThis looks like an amazing tool. As someone who often uses courses that have premade notes but highly limited exercise and quiz material, this looks like a serious blessing (assuming it works). Thanks!
- sakuronto 9y agoUnfortunately, my courses seem to have the opposite problem, but at least there's always Wikipedia.
- bob_theslob646 9y agoDo I have to sign up to see a demo? Where is the "show"?
- msteffen 9y agoWould any of the authors be willing to comment on how questions are generated (i.e. what algorithm)? Asking as somebody with a casual interest in AI
- aryav 9y agoOur algorithm roughly parallels NMT systems, and is mostly based on seq2seq.
- bluetwo 9y agoDoes the world need a large amount of highly automated but poorly designed quizzes?
- jstarfish 9y agoIt addresses a poorly designed form of education. Until we address the stupidity of regurgitation of facts as a means of learning, if this helps someone generate flash cards to prep for exams, it's a positive thing.
- bluetwo 9y agoHow to build better instruction is already a known science.
- bookbinder 9y agoSUGGESTION: When I click on a link labelled "press," I expect to see a page with media mentions, not my e-mail client's Compose New Message window.
- dang 9y agoThis looks wonderful, but it isn't a Show HN if people can't try it out. That's described at https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html. Once it's possible for users to try out, please do post it here. I'm sure many will be very interested. And email us a link at hn@ycombinator.com so we can make sure it doesn't get flagged.
- ziikutv 9y agoI would suggest adding a picture of the generated quiz. The images there don’t really tell me much; perhaps that’s intentional.
- taixhi 9y agoGreat suggestion, we didn't even realise that! Check back soon and they'll be there, thank you!
- automoton1 9y agoDoes this work on any document that you pass into it? How does it handle questions for ideas that continue to the next page?
- robot197 9y agoHow does this work ? Any descriptions of it would be very informative. Also congrats