Well, it’d be understated to say “It’s been a minute,” but I’ll say it, it’s been a minute. Rest assured we’re still here maintaining and evolving Yak Tack. We’ve just not written much about it over the past year.
But we’re back, and we’re writing words, and we’re writing code.
ChatGPT.
On Wednesday ChatGPT released an API. We’ve been playing around with the interface for a while, and jumped on the chance to integrate the ChatGPT API into Yak Tack. By Thursday, we’d replaced our word-example and etymology logic with it.
Oxford is our primary dictionary, and it’s been pretty good so far. But we’ve not always been happy with their examples of word usage, and their etymologies are a bit too pithy.
Take the word “pernicious,” for example. It’s defined as:
having a harmful effect, especially in a gradual or subtle way.
Better examples.
And here’s context Oxford gives us for how “pernicious” is used in a sentence:
Equally problematic is the pernicious effect of bad design on the environment.
It’s not bad, although the term “bad design” isn’t obviously associated with the environment; we’re left having to imagine what is being designed in order to define the relationship. Compare this to what ChatGPT gives us:
The pernicious effects of cyberbullying can have long-lasting impacts on a person's mental health and well-being.
Here, ChatGPT shows how something specific (in this case, cyberbullying) can have harmful, damaging, and long-lasting effects (i.e., pernicious effects) on a person's well-being. It’s clearer than the Oxford example.
Better etymologies.
Further, we’d been deriving word etymologies from Oxford, too. Here’s how they describe the etymology of “pernicious”:
Late middle english: from latin perniciosus ‘destructive’, from pernicies ‘ruin’, based on nex, nec- ‘death’.
And when we ask ChatGPT, we get:
The word "pernicious" comes from the Latin word "perniciosus," which means "destructive, harmful." It is derived from the Latin verb "pernicies," which means "ruin, destruction, death." The word "pernicious" entered English in the late 14th century and has been used to describe something that is harmful or destructive ever since.
It covers not just the Latin origin of the word, as Oxford does, but also tells us when it made its way to English and how it has been used since. It’s an important, incremental improvement.
What’s next?
Oxford’s still an important part of Yak Tack. But we’re excited by the maturation of AI technology and will continue to look for novel ways to help you all remember words!