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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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/
Super interesting topic, thank you. For wider adoption I think it would be desirable to find alternatives that are also neutral in their sentiment. I spent some time thinking about "agentic AI" where the proposed alternative was "probabilistic, unverified software manipulator" which I think is very far from neutral. What do you think about "language-guided iterative solver"?
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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 As we used to say, 'Knowledge wants to be free! But maybe it does not want to be anthropomorphized'
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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/
« hallucination → undesirable output »
Why not a more straighforward "erroneous outpout"?
An undesirable result could a result that is accurate but that is not the one I am looking for. A made-up quote is more than undesirable, it is erroneous.
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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/
« Pronouns are chosen each time, and avoiding pronouns usually reserved for people (and pets), e.g. he, she, and singular they is a good first step. »
Isn't singular they "it"?
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S snue@radikal.social shared this topic
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« Pronouns are chosen each time, and avoiding pronouns usually reserved for people (and pets), e.g. he, she, and singular they is a good first step. »
Isn't singular they "it"?
@MichelPatrice Hey it's fine to not know the details of the grammar of a language, but if you have a question, maybe don't phrase it as a "correction" to the person who wrote the piece you're responding to?
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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 refuse to say “answers“ and call them “answer-shaped outputs”.
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@MichelPatrice Hey it's fine to not know the details of the grammar of a language, but if you have a question, maybe don't phrase it as a "correction" to the person who wrote the piece you're responding to?
My question can be read in a sarcastic voice or as a genuine question. In writing, unfortunately, the vocal intonation is lost. I guess that as some things are lost in translation, some things are lost in the translation from speech to text.
My genuine question remains, isn't singular they "it"? Or is there a nuance that I'm not getting?
As a linguist and as an english speaker, I guess that you are often confronted to the occasional awkwardness of non-native english speakers.
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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 fantastic piece. thanks. the earlier piece you linked was kind of life-changing for me. in the sense that it re-framed my perspective in a fundamental way. since it i have been thinking a lot about it and changing the language i used, and felt kind of gratified that some of what write in the follow-up is stuff i had been thinking. i mean obviously you wrote a lot more but still felt pleased i'd been thinking along the right lines. thank you for sharing your expertise with us.
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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 Thanks. I've been calling it the plausible sentence machine.
If "undesirable" output is too emotive, how about "unreliable" output?
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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 since freaking 2022, i've haaaated that the sloplords successfully got everyone to call theil nonsense outputs "hallucinations"
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My question can be read in a sarcastic voice or as a genuine question. In writing, unfortunately, the vocal intonation is lost. I guess that as some things are lost in translation, some things are lost in the translation from speech to text.
My genuine question remains, isn't singular they "it"? Or is there a nuance that I'm not getting?
As a linguist and as an english speaker, I guess that you are often confronted to the occasional awkwardness of non-native english speakers.
@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
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.
