Stochastic parrots

I thought that this piece on chatbots from New York magazine was worth reading and thought-provoking.

I was amused/alarmed by one Christopher Manning who seems to think we are stochastic parrots, and “the meaning of a word is simply a description of the contexts in which it appears.” Really? Apparently, the idea that meaning has anything to do with how words hook up to the world and to our interactions with the world and each other is antiquated, the “sort of standard 20th-century philosophy-of-language position.” Well, that’s us told.

I was pointed to this piece by a post on Mastodon. I still occasionally look at the old bird site because that’s where posts about music and other cultural stuff still are mostly to be found. But these days, quite apart from not wanting to have too much to do with Musk Enterprises Inc., the more genial atmosphere of Mastodon, on my instance anyway, suits me fine.

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