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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« 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.
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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.
