Assertion certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Hsu: Whisper outperformed human listeners on accented Korean English clips

Andrew Hsu · Personalized AI Language Education — with Andrew Hsu, Speak · Jul 11, 2025 · at 24:23

Andrew Hsu is co-founder and CTO of Speak, discussing early testing of OpenAI's Whisper model on beginner English learners in Korea.

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“There were four of us in the room, we all closed our eyes, and none of us had any idea, and the model got it right. So, I mean, superhuman.”

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