Are you annoyed with the anthropomorphizing language being used in the "AI" discourse, but not sure how to talk about this stuff without it?
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@MichelPatrice
English has one plural pronoun (they) that doesn't mark gender or animacy. It has four standard singular pronouns (setting aside neopronouns):it - singular, inanimate
he - singular, animate, masculine
she - singular, animate, feminine
they - singular, animateSingular they, i.e. the pronoun they used to refer to a person, has been a part of English since at least the time of Chaucer, used when the gender of the referent was unknown or irrelevant.
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@MichelPatrice More recently, singular they has been adopted as a pronoun to refer to non-binary and agender individuals.
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@MichelPatrice More recently, singular they has been adopted as a pronoun to refer to non-binary and agender individuals.
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@MichelPatrice Bonus English linguistics lesson: When you ask a question with a negative ("Isn't the answer X?") you are introducing a strong presupposition that the answer is X.
In the context of your question, posed to a linguist about the article she had written, comes off (oh so typically for Mastodon) as not a question but a correction.
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@MichelPatrice Bonus English linguistics lesson: When you ask a question with a negative ("Isn't the answer X?") you are introducing a strong presupposition that the answer is X.
In the context of your question, posed to a linguist about the article she had written, comes off (oh so typically for Mastodon) as not a question but a correction.
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@MichelPatrice Et puis honnêtement, je trouve que le même phénomène arrive in français. «Le singulier du pronom « they », n'est-ce pas « it »?»
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@MichelPatrice
English has one plural pronoun (they) that doesn't mark gender or animacy. It has four standard singular pronouns (setting aside neopronouns):it - singular, inanimate
he - singular, animate, masculine
she - singular, animate, feminine
they - singular, animateSingular they, i.e. the pronoun they used to refer to a person, has been a part of English since at least the time of Chaucer, used when the gender of the referent was unknown or irrelevant.
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Interesting, I did not get that this singular they thing existed before, I thought that it appeared with the new non-binary vocabulary.
Again, and I'm not correcting you, this is a genuine question, why not "it" since AI, being a machine, is inanimate?
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Interesting, I did not get that this singular they thing existed before, I thought that it appeared with the new non-binary vocabulary.
Again, and I'm not correcting you, this is a genuine question, why not "it" since AI, being a machine, is inanimate?
@MichelPatrice Yes, of course, use 'it'. Where do you see me saying not to?
The piece you are responding to says:
"avoiding pronouns usually reserved for people (and pets), e.g. he, she, and singular they is a good first step."
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@MichelPatrice Et puis honnêtement, je trouve que le même phénomène arrive in français. «Le singulier du pronom « they », n'est-ce pas « it »?»
En tant que québécois, je dirais plutôt « Le singulier du pronom "they", c'est pas "it"? » et ça pourrait être aussi bien une question qu'une correction, selon l'intonation.
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@MichelPatrice Yes, of course, use 'it'. Where do you see me saying not to?
The piece you are responding to says:
"avoiding pronouns usually reserved for people (and pets), e.g. he, she, and singular they is a good first step."
I get it. This singular they part was confusing, I guess. Désolé, je posais une question et je ne voulais pas en faire toute une histoire.
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Interesting, I did not get that this singular they thing existed before, I thought that it appeared with the new non-binary vocabulary.
Again, and I'm not correcting you, this is a genuine question, why not "it" since AI, being a machine, is inanimate?
@MichelPatrice Ah, so you are familiar with singular 'they' used to refer to non-binary people.
I was giving you the benefit of the doubt as an L2 English speaker that perhaps you weren't familiar with that usage.
Now I suspect you are just being rude about people's pronouns here and making some dehumanizing joke.
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I get it. This singular they part was confusing, I guess. Désolé, je posais une question et je ne voulais pas en faire toute une histoire.
@MichelPatrice Hey so next time, take what you've learned about negative questions in English and apply it. "What does singular they mean?" is a fine question to ask.
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@MichelPatrice Ah, so you are familiar with singular 'they' used to refer to non-binary people.
I was giving you the benefit of the doubt as an L2 English speaker that perhaps you weren't familiar with that usage.
Now I suspect you are just being rude about people's pronouns here and making some dehumanizing joke.
Come on.
Encore désolé d'en faire toute une histoire. Et épargnez-moi vos procès d'intention.
Merci quand même d'avoir pris le temps de répondre à mes questions.
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@MichelPatrice Hey so next time, take what you've learned about negative questions in English and apply it. "What does singular they mean?" is a fine question to ask.
I speak english just like the average english speaker and the average english speaker is not a native speaker.
Le ton condescendant et méprisant de votre réponse est possiblement involontaire, mais je comprends bien que je vous énerve.
Je continuerai à lire ce que vous publiez, c'est intéressant, mais je laisserai faire pour la discussion.
Ce n'est pas Twitter ici.
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I speak english just like the average english speaker and the average english speaker is not a native speaker.
Le ton condescendant et méprisant de votre réponse est possiblement involontaire, mais je comprends bien que je vous énerve.
Je continuerai à lire ce que vous publiez, c'est intéressant, mais je laisserai faire pour la discussion.
Ce n'est pas Twitter ici.
Peut-être davantage blessant que méprisant.
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Are you annoyed with the anthropomorphizing language being used in the "AI" discourse, but not sure how to talk about this stuff without it? Nanna Inie and I have got you covered:
https://buttondown.com/maiht3k/archive/how-to-talk-about-ai-without-adding-to-the/
> artificial intelligence → probabilistic automation
hybrid intelligence → augmented human intelligence
image recognition → image labeling
speech recognition → automatic transcription
the model shows bias → the model reflects bias
model mistakes → model errors
chatbots are good at … → chatbots are good for …
hallucination → undesirable output
@emilymbender this is really great, thank you!
In conversations about AI, I rarely if ever hear people refer to a chatbot as anything other than "it," maybe I keep good company, but the output of these machines is still so unnatural to me I just can't see these things as conscious, or even just cognisant.
I do, however, frequently take shortcuts in talking about LLMs when saying things like, "trying to get it to understand," or "arguing with it," or "it thinks that..." I know I should say things like "trying to bias the output" instead of "trying to get it to understand," but the linguistic shortcut of using the word "understand" is just so much easier sometimes. -
@emilymbender
I read it and I agree with what you wrote. I'm saying that if we stick to the LLM definition, automatically there is no intelligence. But I'm no expert.@Imprinted @emilymbender It's okay to not be an expert, but... Prof. Bender *is*.
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Are you annoyed with the anthropomorphizing language being used in the "AI" discourse, but not sure how to talk about this stuff without it? Nanna Inie and I have got you covered:
https://buttondown.com/maiht3k/archive/how-to-talk-about-ai-without-adding-to-the/
@emilymbender I'm no expert, but how about "baseless output" for "hallucination"?
Even non-"hallucinated" output can be undesirable for various reasons, but the key point about "hallucinated" output is surely that it is groundless. -
@emilymbender I'm no expert, but how about "baseless output" for "hallucination"?
Even non-"hallucinated" output can be undesirable for various reasons, but the key point about "hallucinated" output is surely that it is groundless.@DMakarios the thing is that it is all groundless with LLMs.
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@emilymbender also, 100% re misleading metaphors.
i blame von neumann.
@JamesWidman @emilymbender him and his organs.
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@MichelPatrice Yes, of course, use 'it'. Where do you see me saying not to?
The piece you are responding to says:
"avoiding pronouns usually reserved for people (and pets), e.g. he, she, and singular they is a good first step."
@emilymbender
I guess this sentence is easy to misread as "avoid he/she, use they". It took me two or three attempts to read it the right way. Maybe if the last bit "as a start" was moved to the front of the sentence, it'd be easier to read? -
Are you annoyed with the anthropomorphizing language being used in the "AI" discourse, but not sure how to talk about this stuff without it? Nanna Inie and I have got you covered:
https://buttondown.com/maiht3k/archive/how-to-talk-about-ai-without-adding-to-the/
@emilymbender This is brilliant. Great for sharing to educate people.
I don't think 'probabilistic automation' however is a term that is likely to catch on and using the term is likely to make people think you're talking about something else.
I think 'intelligence simulator; might be a better term. It is probably not accurate way to describe AI and I would defer to your knowledge on this, but to me it could be a term people would understand as another way of saying AI, yet the 'simulator' part is slightly more of a put down than 'artificial.' Also the emphasis on simulator rather than intelligence.
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Are you annoyed with the anthropomorphizing language being used in the "AI" discourse, but not sure how to talk about this stuff without it? Nanna Inie and I have got you covered:
https://buttondown.com/maiht3k/archive/how-to-talk-about-ai-without-adding-to-the/
@emilymbender
In my (limited) understanding of English I associated "prompt" only with computers, so decided to check the Cambridge dictionary and found this to my surprise.
"... that has some of the qualities that a human brain has ..."
#LLM #language
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/prompt
