At least in the workplace and classrooms. For many, it seems natural, even inevitable, that we anthropomorphize large language models (LLMs). After all, they talk! Science fiction has taught us to expect talking computers to be like people. It can be fun to talk to a disembodied, very helpful, not-really-a person as long as it’s Her and not Hal. So far, entertainment seems to be what LLMs are good for. Using them for work or for learning is different. In those contexts, pretending LLMs are people creates problems, not the least of which is that it obscures how they work and how they might help us do our jobs or learn new skills.
"Little harm can come from treating a hand axe or the moon as a conversational partner. When the tool talks back, the game really has changed, and we need to figure out how."
Would that we could go back to the early days of our species and blog on developments in flint-knapping!
While LLMs may be the first technology to use words to speak to us, there's something about technology/skill/tools which influences their possessors. Don't you think the uranium & other non-verbal materials and processes in the labs of the Manhattan Project engineers were "talking" to them?
Absolutely! Humans are part of the natural world and so we are in constant communication with our environment through our attempts to shape it. Of course, that means we are in turn shaped by our attempts. That dream of going back and recovering some of what's lost is the point of Thoreau's line about humans becoming the tools of their tools. What makes this moment so important is that exactly how LLMs will shape us is unsettled. Our choices, like whether or not to treat them like people, are not yet made. Once it becomes a collective habit, we will be shaped by that choice, just as we are shaped by the choices made by humans in the labs on the Manhattan Project and the political leaders who chose to use that technology.
"Little harm can come from treating a hand axe or the moon as a conversational partner. When the tool talks back, the game really has changed, and we need to figure out how."
Would that we could go back to the early days of our species and blog on developments in flint-knapping!
While LLMs may be the first technology to use words to speak to us, there's something about technology/skill/tools which influences their possessors. Don't you think the uranium & other non-verbal materials and processes in the labs of the Manhattan Project engineers were "talking" to them?
Absolutely! Humans are part of the natural world and so we are in constant communication with our environment through our attempts to shape it. Of course, that means we are in turn shaped by our attempts. That dream of going back and recovering some of what's lost is the point of Thoreau's line about humans becoming the tools of their tools. What makes this moment so important is that exactly how LLMs will shape us is unsettled. Our choices, like whether or not to treat them like people, are not yet made. Once it becomes a collective habit, we will be shaped by that choice, just as we are shaped by the choices made by humans in the labs on the Manhattan Project and the political leaders who chose to use that technology.