发布 HN：Uplift（YC S25）– 为服务不足语言提供的语音模型
嗨，HN，我们是Zaid、Muhammad和Hammad，Uplift AI的联合创始人（<a href="https://upliftai.org">https://upliftai.org</a>）。我们构建能够使用被忽视语言的模型——目前支持乌尔都语、信德语和俾路支语。
全球有十亿人无法阅读。在像巴基斯坦这样的国家——世界第五人口大国——42%的成年人是文盲。这阻碍了整个经济的发展：患者无法阅读医疗报告，父母无法帮助孩子完成作业，银行无法全面数字化，农民无法研究最佳实践，人们只能记住智能手机应用的按钮序列。语音人工智能接口可以解决这些问题，我们认为这可能是现代人工智能的伟大益处之一。
目前，现有的语音模型几乎无法支持这些语言，而大型科技公司进展缓慢。
Uplift AI最初是一个侧项目，旨在为翻译和语音模型制作数据集。对我们来说，这只是一个“有趣的副业”，并不是一个“重要的全职项目”。借助一些初步数据，我们在WhatsApp上快速搭建了一个乌尔都语语音机器人，并将其提供给一位家政工人。两天内就有800人使用了它。当我们深入了解用户时，我们发现文本接口对许多人来说并不适用。因此，我们开始全职运营Uplift AI以解决这个问题。
最具挑战性的部分是，构建优秀语音模型所需的所有基础组件在这些语言中都存在问题。例如，如果你正在创建一个语音合成模型，你会从YouTube抓取大量数据，并使用转录模型进行自动标注……在英语中这都非常简单。但在被忽视的语言中，由于转录模式不准确，这种方法并不奏效。
还有许多其他挑战。例如，当你雇佣人工转录员来标注数据时，他们通常没有适用于自己语言的拼写校正工具，这会在数据中产生大量噪音……使得在数据量少的情况下训练模型变得困难。在音素、静音检测、附加符号等方面还有更多挑战。
我们通过制作优秀的内部工具来帮助数据标注来解决这些问题。此外，我们自己获取数据，而不是购买。这看似反直觉，但相较于那些购买数据后再进行训练的公司，这是一个巨大的优势。通过自行获取数据，我们能够创建正确的数据分布，并用更少的数据获得更好的模型。通过在内部完成整个过程（数据、标注、训练、部署），我们能够更快地取得进展。
今天，我们公开提供乌尔都语、信德语和俾路支语的文本转语音API。这里有一个展示这一点的视频：<a href="https://www.loom.com/share/dcd5020967444c228e9c127151e7a9f5" rel="nofollow">https://www.loom.com/share/dcd5020967444c228e9c127151e7a9f5</a>。
可汗学院正在使用我们的技术将视频配音成乌尔都语（<a href="https://ur.khanacademy.org" rel="nofollow">https://ur.khanacademy.org</a>）。
我们的模型在信息性用例（如AI机器人）方面表现出色，但在情感性用例（如诗歌）方面还需要更多的工作。
我们已经向很多人提供了私密的测试访问，今天我们将公开发布我们的模型。我们相信这将是我们最快了解表现不佳领域的方式，以便迅速进行改进。
我们非常希望听到大家的反馈，尤其是关于你们在被忽视语言（不仅仅是我们开始的巴基斯坦语言）方面的经验，以及你们的总体意见。
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Hi HN, we are Zaid, Muhammad and Hammad, the co-founders of Uplift AI (<a href="https://upliftai.org">https://upliftai.org</a>). We build models that speak underserved languages — today: Urdu, Sindhi, and Balochi.<p>A billion people worldwide can't read. In countries like Pakistan – the 5th most populous country – 42% of adults are illiterate. This holds back the entire economy: patients can't read medical reports, parents can't help with homework, banks can't go fully digital, farmers can't research best practices, and people memorize smartphone app button sequences. Voice AI interfaces can fix all of this, and we think this will perhaps be one of the great benefits of modern AI.<p>Right now, existing voice models barely work for these languages, and big tech is moving slowly.<p>Uplift AI was originally a side project to make datasets for translation and voice models. For us it was a "cool side-thing" to work on, not an "important full-time thing" to work on. With some initial data we hacked together a Urdu Voice Bot on Whatsapp and gave it to one domestic worker. In two days 800 people were using it. When we dived deeper into understanding the users, we learned that text interfaces don't work for sooo many. So we started Uplift AI to solve this problem fulltime.<p>The most challenging part is that all the building blocks needed for great voice models are broken for these languages. For example, if you are creating a speech synthesis model, you will scrape a lot of data from youtube and auto-label it using a transcription model… all very easy to do in English. But it doesn't work in under-served languages because the transcription modes are not accurate.<p>There are many other challenges. Like when you hire human transcribers to label the data, often they don't have any spell correctors for their languages, and this creates lots of noise in the data… making it hard to train models with low data. There are many more challenges in phonemes, silence detection, diacritization etc.<p>We solve these problems by making great internal tooling to help with data labeling. Also, we source our own data and don't buy it. This is counterintuitive, but a big advantage over companies buying data and then training. By sourcing our own data we create the right data distributions and get much better models with much less data. By doing the entire thing inhouse, (data, labeling, training, deploying) we are able to make a lot faster progress.<p>Today we publicly offer a text to speech APIs for Urdu, Sindhi, and Balochi. Here's a video which shows this: <a href="https://www.loom.com/share/dcd5020967444c228e9c127151e7a9f5" rel="nofollow">https://www.loom.com/share/dcd5020967444c228e9c127151e7a9f5</a>.<p>Khan Academy is using our tech to dub videos to Urdu (<a href="https://ur.khanacademy.org" rel="nofollow">https://ur.khanacademy.org</a>).<p>Our models excel at informational use cases (like AI bots) but need more work in emotive use-cases like poetry.<p>We have been giving a lot of people private access in beta mode, and today are launching our models publicly. We believe this will be the fastest way for us to learn about areas that are not performing well so we can fix them quickly.<p>We'd love to hear from all of you, especially around your experiences with under-served languages (not just the Pakistani ones we're starting with) and your comments in general.