How To Talk To A Machine Without Anthropomorphising It

LLMs remain a divisive topic in these times. Perhaps we all know someone who’s become over-infatuated with their new robotic friend, or who believes it has made them a genius. [Emily M. Bender] and [Nanna Inie] have written about how people anthropomorphise the LLMs they interact with, and suggested some language tips to avoid that. It’s a couple of months old, but we think Hackaday readers will find it interesting.

Their analysis is interesting, because it looks at the way people talk about LLMs and highlights the unconscious anthropomorphism. The LLM is a piece of software not a person, so why does it “recognise” when it does “speech recognition”, for example. They suggest “automatic transcription” instead. Even “hallucination” implies cognisance that evidently isn’t there. They admit that their suggestion of “undesirable output” isn’t entirely appropriate. They’re on safer ground with “input” and “output” instead of “prompt” and “response”.

Whatever your views on them, it’s evident that LLM usage will be a feature of the world for the forseeable future. The language surrounding them is however capable of evolving, and maybe some of the suggestions here are worth taking note of.

Grappling with our new electronic overlords? Have a look at our AI for Skeptics series.