Are you annoyed with the anthropomorphizing language being used in the "AI" discourse, but not sure how to talk about this stuff without it?

[tharkonen@mastodon.social]

@emilymbender thank you very, very, very much for this article. So much needed!

[joellmrtz@mastodon.nl]

@emilymbender I love this, thank you so much for sharing. Reminds me of how Anthropic talks about AI models as if they have feelings and as if they can live or die.

[overtondoors@infosec.exchange]

Too generous by half @emilymbender

Stochastic parrot -not- "probabilistic automation" in ley use probabilistic is as opaque as stochastic, but everyone knows parrots don't understand the language they mimic.

Bullshit -in stead of- "hallucination" and "model mistakes" because if it's an response made without the intent to be correct it is by definition bullshit.

[emilymbender@dair-community.social]

@OvertonDoors Cute, that you think I of all people am unaware of the phrase which I coined.

[overtondoors@infosec.exchange]

Well, come on the @emilymbender

It's a good phrase, stick by it.

[emilymbender@dair-community.social]

@OvertonDoors It is a good phrase, but it is a descriptive term for LLMs, not other things called "AI". This is why we proposed "probabilistic automation" for the cases where something more general is needed.

https://medium.com/@emilymenonbender/stochastic-parrots-frequently-unasked-questions-49c2e7d22d11

[overtondoors@infosec.exchange]

eh, you right @emilymbender

Dead right.

The people using these models. They have 1/4 to 1/5 of the functional language skills, reading skills, and ability to reason through the pitfalls inhernt in this tech that you do.

Stochastic Parrot isn't precise. But it's accurate, and in communication for the people who need to hear this accuracy trumps precision.

Anyways, half or most of the well worded criticism -ive read my way through the arguments- boils down to "this phrase is a good counter to our disinformation. Thus I don't like it."

[clickhere@mastodon.ie]

@martinvermeer "Glorified predictive text"?

@Mimesatwork @Petesmom @emilymbender

[martinvermeer@fediscience.org]

@clickhere @Mimesatwork @Petesmom @emilymbender

"Stochastic transmogrifier"

[cobbpg@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@emilymbender I often find it easy to replace “AI” with simply “software” or “automation” depending on the context, because it’s a deliberately vague term to start with. As for chatbots, “text generator” can work just fine. Sometimes I jokingly call them “poetry generators”, because the output has to follow a specific form (e.g. code, slide deck, video script etc.) asked by the user.

[paelnever@masto.es]

@emilymbender
So you say "AI isn't a thing" but keep talking about LLMs as if it was the whole umbrella of technologies under that term.

[stevefoerster@social.vivaldi.net]

@emilymbender Don't anthropomorphize LLMs. They don't like it!

[rrb@infosec.exchange]

@emilymbender Maybe instead of using the term "intelligence" a more appropriate word, like "fecal matter" should be used?

[mimesatwork@wandering.shop]

@martinvermeer @Petesmom @emilymbender I don't think 'corpus-based generation' is a feasible alternative. A good alternative is as easily understandable and pronounceable as possible, otherwise it's not going to be adopted into wider use, and most people will associate "corpus" with any biological body, because their only connection with the word is from corpus Christi, as in body of Christ

[thisalex@hachyderm.io]

@emilymbender the topic is interesting, but the choice of words is really complicated. A lot of different things are packed there and it’s way too easy either to oversimplify (vulgarise) or overgeneralise. I will be thinking about this one.

[martyfouts@mastodon.online]

@iamnotU @emilymbender People have been doing this since the first welding robot was installed at GM in 1959.

[rcosta@archaeo.social]

@JamesWidman @emilymbender We need to face LLM communication as a new category of high level programming language. We can argue that writing something like: print "$name", is also 'anthropomorphizing language'. We get annoyed. Pioneers that communicated with machines using physical switches and machine code also did, after witness kids using BASIC and keyboards. The best advice to interact with LLM I read: Talk like a caveman : "do this", "add that", etc.. Save tokens, energy and time.

[iamnotu@mastodon.social]

@MartyFouts @emilymbender Wally Welder

[megamichelle@a2mi.social]

@emilymbender

I don't usually have to describe the output of LLMs, but when I do, I like to say "it emitted some text which seemed to say".

But even "seemed to say" is too anthropomorphizing.

[megamichelle@a2mi.social]

@emilymbender

One time, I even tried "it emitted some text which, if it had been written by a human, would say..."

But maybe I could go with "it emitted some text which, if it had been written with intention, would say..."