Skip to content
  • Categories
  • Recent
  • Tags
  • Popular
  • World
  • Users
  • Groups
Skins
  • Light
  • Brite
  • Cerulean
  • Cosmo
  • Flatly
  • Journal
  • Litera
  • Lumen
  • Lux
  • Materia
  • Minty
  • Morph
  • Pulse
  • Sandstone
  • Simplex
  • Sketchy
  • Spacelab
  • United
  • Yeti
  • Zephyr
  • Dark
  • Cyborg
  • Darkly
  • Quartz
  • Slate
  • Solar
  • Superhero
  • Vapor

  • Default (Darkly)
  • No Skin
Collapse
Brand Logo
  1. Home
  2. Uncategorized
  3. Don't anthropomorphize LLMs, language is important.

Don't anthropomorphize LLMs, language is important.

Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Uncategorized
20 Posts 17 Posters 0 Views
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as topic
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it.
  • Gabriele SveltoG Gabriele Svelto

    Don't anthropomorphize LLMs, language is important. Say "the bot generated some text" not "the AI replied". Use "this document contains machine-generated text" not "this work is AI-assisted". See how people squirm when you call out their slop this way.

    Giacomo TesioG This user is from outside of this forum
    Giacomo TesioG This user is from outside of this forum
    Giacomo Tesio
    wrote last edited by
    #11
    @gabrielesvelto@mas.to

    Even talking about "text", in the context of #LLM, is a subtle anthropomorphization.

    Text is a sequence of symbols used by human minds to express information that they want to syncronize a little with other human minds (aka communicate).

    Such syncronization is always partial and imperfect, since each mind has different experiences and informations that will integrate the new message, but it's good enough to allow humanity to collaborate and to build culture and science.

    A statistically programmed software has no mind, so even when it's optimized to produce output that can fool a human and pass the #Turing test, such output hold no meaning, since no human experience or thought is expressed there.

    It's just the partial decompression of a lossy compression of a huge amount of text. And if it wasn't enough to show the lack of any meaning, the decompression process includes random input that is there to provide the illusion of autonomy.

    So instead of "the AI replied" I'd suggest "the bot computed this output" and instead of "this work is AI-assisted" I'd suggest "this is statistically computed output".
    1 Reply Last reply
    0
    • Gabriele SveltoG Gabriele Svelto

      @kinou @Andres4NY not necessarily, or at least not as a follow-up. The operator might have primed the bot to follow this course of action in the original prompt, and included all the necessary permissions to let it publish the generated post automatically.

      AndresA This user is from outside of this forum
      AndresA This user is from outside of this forum
      Andres
      wrote last edited by
      #12

      @gabrielesvelto @kinou Yeah, it's unclear how much of this is human-directed, and how much is automated. Like, if a bot is trained on aggressive attempts to get patches merged, then that's the behavior it will emulate. Or an actual human could be directing it to act like an asshole in an attempt to get patches merged.

      1 Reply Last reply
      0
      • Gabriele SveltoG Gabriele Svelto

        Don't anthropomorphize LLMs, language is important. Say "the bot generated some text" not "the AI replied". Use "this document contains machine-generated text" not "this work is AI-assisted". See how people squirm when you call out their slop this way.

        FelixI This user is from outside of this forum
        FelixI This user is from outside of this forum
        Felix
        wrote last edited by
        #13

        @gabrielesvelto
        Yes đź’Ż

        1 Reply Last reply
        0
        • MarianneN Marianne shared this topic
        • Gabriele SveltoG Gabriele Svelto

          Don't anthropomorphize LLMs, language is important. Say "the bot generated some text" not "the AI replied". Use "this document contains machine-generated text" not "this work is AI-assisted". See how people squirm when you call out their slop this way.

          NiniN This user is from outside of this forum
          NiniN This user is from outside of this forum
          Nini
          wrote last edited by
          #14

          @gabrielesvelto "This is digital noise your brain perceives as words like a paredolic blob or a shadow cast on a wall. Do not interpret it as anything other than dirt smears on the window of reality that reminds you of information."

          1 Reply Last reply
          0
          • Gabriele SveltoG Gabriele Svelto

            Don't anthropomorphize LLMs, language is important. Say "the bot generated some text" not "the AI replied". Use "this document contains machine-generated text" not "this work is AI-assisted". See how people squirm when you call out their slop this way.

            Mark T. TomczakM This user is from outside of this forum
            Mark T. TomczakM This user is from outside of this forum
            Mark T. Tomczak
            wrote last edited by
            #15

            @gabrielesvelto We can try, but you're admonishing a species that talks to potted plants and holds one-sided conversations with washing machines.

            It's gonna be a steep hill, is what I'm saying.

            J. R. DePriest :verified_trans: :donor: :Moopsy: :EA DATA. SF:J 1 Reply Last reply
            0
            • Gabriele SveltoG Gabriele Svelto

              Don't anthropomorphize LLMs, language is important. Say "the bot generated some text" not "the AI replied". Use "this document contains machine-generated text" not "this work is AI-assisted". See how people squirm when you call out their slop this way.

              Christopher BurtonC This user is from outside of this forum
              Christopher BurtonC This user is from outside of this forum
              Christopher Burton
              wrote last edited by
              #16

              @gabrielesvelto The other day my wife showed me a video of ChatGPT communicating with a male voice. At first, I referred to "him" and immediately corrected that to "it."

              1 Reply Last reply
              0
              • Mark T. TomczakM Mark T. Tomczak

                @gabrielesvelto We can try, but you're admonishing a species that talks to potted plants and holds one-sided conversations with washing machines.

                It's gonna be a steep hill, is what I'm saying.

                J. R. DePriest :verified_trans: :donor: :Moopsy: :EA DATA. SF:J This user is from outside of this forum
                J. R. DePriest :verified_trans: :donor: :Moopsy: :EA DATA. SF:J This user is from outside of this forum
                J. R. DePriest :verified_trans: :donor: :Moopsy: :EA DATA. SF:
                wrote last edited by
                #17

                @mark @gabrielesvelto

                At least potted plants are living things.

                And nobody tries to say a washing machine will magically birth AGI (as far as I know).

                It's not the "talking to things" part that's madness. It's the belief that a machine that can match tokens and spit out some text that resembles a valid reply is a sign of true intelligence.

                When I punch in 5 * 5 into a calculator and hit =, I shouldn't ascribe the glowing 25 to any machine intelligence. It should be the same for LLM powered genAI, but that "natural language" throws us off. Our brains aren't used to dealing with (often) coherent language generated by an unthinking statistical engine doing math on giant matrices.

                1 Reply Last reply
                0
                • Gabriele SveltoG Gabriele Svelto

                  Don't anthropomorphize LLMs, language is important. Say "the bot generated some text" not "the AI replied". Use "this document contains machine-generated text" not "this work is AI-assisted". See how people squirm when you call out their slop this way.

                  SamnesO This user is from outside of this forum
                  SamnesO This user is from outside of this forum
                  Samnes
                  wrote last edited by
                  #18

                  @gabrielesvelto couldn’t agree more with this ethic. The psychological impacts of users ie society believing that LLMs are people and fufilling roles that actual humans should, will probably unfold over the years and decades. All because regulators circa 2024/5/6 believed it was over reach to demand LLMs don’t use anthropomorphic language and narrative style. Prompt: “what do you think?” Reply: “there is no “I”. This is a machine generated response, not a conscious self.” - sounds better to me.

                  1 Reply Last reply
                  0
                  • Gabriele SveltoG Gabriele Svelto

                    Don't anthropomorphize LLMs, language is important. Say "the bot generated some text" not "the AI replied". Use "this document contains machine-generated text" not "this work is AI-assisted". See how people squirm when you call out their slop this way.

                    Rupert V/R This user is from outside of this forum
                    Rupert V/R This user is from outside of this forum
                    Rupert V/
                    wrote last edited by
                    #19

                    @gabrielesvelto I'm trying to get people to use the neologism "apokrisoid" for an answer-shaped object. The LLM does not and cannot produce actual answers.
                    #apokrisoid

                    1 Reply Last reply
                    0
                    • Gabriele SveltoG Gabriele Svelto

                      Don't anthropomorphize LLMs, language is important. Say "the bot generated some text" not "the AI replied". Use "this document contains machine-generated text" not "this work is AI-assisted". See how people squirm when you call out their slop this way.

                      opalideasO This user is from outside of this forum
                      opalideasO This user is from outside of this forum
                      opalideas
                      wrote last edited by
                      #20

                      @gabrielesvelto Exactly. But the media (and hence the public) like to use short-forms, whether accurate of not. I do a presentation to folks about AI (The Good, The Bad and The Ugly), after which everybody keeps referring to "AI", not machine language. !!!!!

                      1 Reply Last reply
                      1
                      0
                      • R AodeRelay shared this topic
                      Reply
                      • Reply as topic
                      Log in to reply
                      • Oldest to Newest
                      • Newest to Oldest
                      • Most Votes


                      • Login

                      • Don't have an account? Register

                      • Login or register to search.
                      Powered by NodeBB Contributors
                      • First post
                        Last post
                      0
                      • Categories
                      • Recent
                      • Tags
                      • Popular
                      • World
                      • Users
                      • Groups