You Are Not a Parrot

In her review of the show, London-based writer and editor Isabelle Bucklow reflects on how language – like imagery – is no longer simply a vessel for human feeling. In the age of Large Language Models and ChatGPT, language has become increasingly slippery: saturated with noise, drained by repetition and harder than ever to hold onto. It’s being loo... See more

When people make sweeping statements like “language models are bullshit machines” or “ChatGPT lies,” it usually tells me they’re not seriously engaged in any kind of AI/ML work or productive discourse in this space.

First, because saying a machine “lies” or “bullshits” implies motivated intent in a social context, which language models don’t have. M... See more

A very common trope is to treat LLMs as if they were intelligent agents going out in the world and doing things. That’s just a category mistake. A much better way of thinking about them is as a technology that allows humans to access information from many other humans and use that information to make decisions. We have been doing this for as long a... See more