I have no problem with this person choosing to use different language to describe this.
But I do have a problem generally with attempts to impose language changes on others (in the case of this post you only see that tendency in the title).
This sort of linguistic prescriptivism seems in vogue for political reasons lately, most saliently in the hordes of people who insist that you must not use natural anthropomorphic language when talking about LLMs, but that’s far from the only political attempt to control language we’ve seen recently. Let people talk how they want! Langauage is an evolving thing that shouldn’t be controlled by scolds!
Okay, just so I understand you here: you are policing other peoples polcing of language and we must accept your imposition of changes to norms of policing language, currently which means not policing it, except to ensure that nobody polices it. Er, almost nobody.
How dare you police my policing of other people’s policing of language? :)
More seriously: the people I’m objecting to are those that constantly chime in to unrelated conversations when someone says eg “the LLM thinks that X” with “please don’t anthropomorphize, LLMs do not think”. They are the ones policing language, it’s self-evidently silly to call my objection to their behavior yet another attempt to police language. They can use whatever language they want in their own conversations, I want them to stop jumping in to conversations they are otherwise involved in with no goal other than to scold. Surely you can see how there’s a difference?
More substantively: we don’t have a real definition for most of these anthropomorphic terms like “think” and “feel” and “want” and they are the closest match to the observed behavior of LLMs in most cases. It’s pointless to object to the way people naturally use language.
semiquaver · · focus · HN ↗
But I do have a problem generally with attempts to impose language changes on others (in the case of this post you only see that tendency in the title).
This sort of linguistic prescriptivism seems in vogue for political reasons lately, most saliently in the hordes of people who insist that you must not use natural anthropomorphic language when talking about LLMs, but that’s far from the only political attempt to control language we’ve seen recently. Let people talk how they want! Langauage is an evolving thing that shouldn’t be controlled by scolds!
ButlerianJihad · · focus · HN ↗
semiquaver · · focus · HN ↗
More seriously: the people I’m objecting to are those that constantly chime in to unrelated conversations when someone says eg “the LLM thinks that X” with “please don’t anthropomorphize, LLMs do not think”. They are the ones policing language, it’s self-evidently silly to call my objection to their behavior yet another attempt to police language. They can use whatever language they want in their own conversations, I want them to stop jumping in to conversations they are otherwise involved in with no goal other than to scold. Surely you can see how there’s a difference?
More substantively: we don’t have a real definition for most of these anthropomorphic terms like “think” and “feel” and “want” and they are the closest match to the observed behavior of LLMs in most cases. It’s pointless to object to the way people naturally use language.