A linguistic anthropologist argues that the line between humans and machines, in terms of how we communicate with each other, is more blurred than most people would like to admit, and this blurring explains much of the discourse swirling around ChatGPT
By Brendan O'Connor, Associate Professor, School of Transboundary Studies, Arizona State University
ChatGPT is a hot topic at my university, where faculty members are very concerned about academic integrity, while Managers are urging us to "embrace the benefits" of this "new frontier." This is a classic example of what I associated Ponia Mishra Mechana The "hype-doom circle" around new technologies. Also, the media coverage of human-artificial intelligence interaction - whether paranoid or aura - tends to emphasize its innovation.
In one sense, this is definitely a new era. Interactions with ChatGPT can be unprecedented, as happened when a technology journalist Couldn't get the chatbot to stop professing his love for him. But in my opinion, the line between humans and machines, in terms of how we interact with each other, is more blurred than most people would like to admit, and this blurring explains much of the discourse swirling around ChatGPT.
When they ask me to tick a box to make sure I'm not a robot, I don't think twice about it - of course I'm not a robot. On the other hand, when my email software suggests a word or phrase to complete my sentence, or when my phone guesses the next word I'm about to text, I start to doubt myself. Is that what I meant? Would it have occurred to me if the software hadn't suggested the Is it? I'm part robot? These large models of language have been trained on massive amounts of "natural" language. Does that make robots part human?
AI chatbots are new, but public debates about language change are not. As a linguistic anthropologist, I find the human reactions to ChatGPT to be the most interesting thing about it. A close look at such responses reveals the beliefs about language that underlie people's ambivalent, uneasy, and still evolving relationship with AI interlocutors.
ChatGPT and its ilk put a mirror to human language. Humans are both highly original and unoriginal when it comes to language. Chatbots reflect this, revealing tendencies and patterns already present in interactions with other humans.
Create or delete?
Recently, the renowned linguist Noam Chomsky and his colleagues claimed that chatbots "Stuck in a prehuman or inhuman stage of cognitive evolutionBecause they can only describe and predict, not explain. Instead of relying on an infinite ability to create new phrases, they compensate with vast amounts of input, allowing them to predict which words to use with a high degree of accuracy.
This is consistent with His historical recognition Chomsky's in that it is not possible to produce human language only through children's imitation of adult speakers. Human language ability had to be generative, because children do not receive enough input to account for all the words they produce, many of which they could not hear before. This is the only way to explain why humans - unlike other animals with sophisticated communication systems - have a theoretically infinite capacity to create new expressions.
Noam Chomsky developed the generative theory of language acquisition.
But there is a problem with this argument. Although humans are endlessly capable of creating new strings of language, people generally do not. Humans constantly recycle bits of language they have encountered in the past and shape their speech in ways that respond – consciously or unconsciously – to the speech of others, present or absent.
as as Mikhail Bakhtin put it – a Chomsky-like figure for linguistic anthropologists – “thought itself”, along with our language, “was born and is shaped in a process of interaction and a struggle with the thought of others." Our words "taste" the contexts in which we and others have encountered them in the past, and therefore we constantly struggle to make them our own.
Even plagiarism is less simple than it seems. The idea of stealing someone else's words assumesBecause communication always takes place between people who bring their original ideas to expression. People may like to think of themselves this way, but the reality shows otherwise in almost every interaction - when I tell my daughter something my father said; When the president delivers a speech drafted by someone else that expresses the views of an outside interest group; Or when a therapist communicates with her patient according to principles that her teachers taught her to pay attention to.
In any given interaction, the frame of production - speaking or writing - and reception - listening or reading and understanding - varies in terms of What is said, how it is said, who says it and who is responsible in any case.
What AI discovers about humans
The prevailing view of human language sees communication primarily as something that occurs between people who invent new expressions from scratch. However, this assumption breaks down when Woebot, an AI-based therapy application, is trained to communicate with human clients by analyzing conversations from person-to-person therapy sessions. It broke when one of my favorite songwriters, Colin Malloy from the band The Decemberists, tells ChatGPT write words and chords in his own style. Malloy says that the resulting song is "incredibly mediocre" and lacks intuition, but also resembles the style of Decemberist's songs.
However, as Malloy points out, chord progressions, themes and rhymes in human-written pop songs tend to mirror other pop songs as well, just as politicians' speeches do. pump freely Previous generations of politicians and activists, already replete with phrases from the Bible. Pop songs and political speeches are especially vivid illustrations of a more general phenomenon. When someone speaks or writes, how much is a new Chomsky? How much is recycled a la Bakhtin? Are we part of a robot? Are robots human?
People like Chomsky who say chatbots are nothing like human speakers are right. However, so are those like Bakhtin who point out that we are never really in control of our words – at least, not as much as we would imagine ourselves to be. In this sense, ChatGPT forces us to rethink an age-old question: how much of our language is really ours?
Comments
Neurolinguistics
As neurophysics replaced Newton's physics, so neurolinguistics replaced Chomsky's linguistics.
Newton believed that there exists in physical reality an imaginary idea called gravity, and Chomsky believed that humans naturally create languages with fixed syntax
Newton misled the physicists for 300 years, and Chomsky misled the linguists for 80 years.
Neurolinguistics is free and has no fixed syntax or certain grammar rules.
Neurolinguistics is simple and self-explanatory, and it is based on a person's natural knowledge.
Neurolinguistics develops in the identification of organs in the human body, which allow him to speak. (throat, mouth, tongue)
Throat, mouth, and tongue are a natural piano of 22 notes
A natural piano belongs to a person with natural knowledge
The man with natural knowledge invented a language for himself based on the sounds produced by the natural piano.
And this is how the process of creating a language is described.
A silent person with natural knowledge touches a block of ice, and miraculously a clear natural knowledge comes to him.
The silent person suddenly realized that he knew something.
There is no way to describe this news because man has not yet invented words. And even though the words had not yet been invented, the person who touched a block of ice suddenly knew a wonderful and clear new knowledge.
And here a miracle happened, and the silent man realized that he needed to give a name to this clear knowledge.
This silent person is a person with a natural knowledge inherent in him, and he knew that his natural piano can provide sounds, which can be used as the name of
The aforementioned natural knowledge.
This silent man chose a short name, which derives from two notes of his natural piano, the sound of K and the sound of R
And so it happened, that the combination of the two sounds (cold) became the name of a natural knowledge, which comes to man following contact with a block of ice.
This is where the creation of human language begins, which is the language of names of natural information.
All the conditions of creation are found in the silent person.
Ingenuity is inherent in the silent person, natural knowledge is inherent in the silent person, and the natural piano is part of the silent person's body.
Every person can learn a language of natural knowledge. This language requires the person who wants to learn to make an act of touching a block of ice, like the silent person,
After that, the learner will recognize the two cold sounds of his natural piano, and then he will understand that this is the name of the natural knowledge that came to him, following contact with a block of ice.
The name of natural knowledge is chosen arbitrarily,
And any combination of sounds can correspond to this.
The combination of sounds (cham) was chosen to be the name of a natural knowledge, which miraculously comes to the person approaching the fire.
The combination of the sounds Hm was also chosen arbitrarily.
This is how human language is created, based on natural knowledge that comes to them, following actions they do in reality.
This language is the language of names of natural information,
coming to humans following actual actions they do in physical reality.
Touch and natural knowledge comes, smell and another natural knowledge comes, see and natural knowledge comes
Otherwise, you taste and another natural knowledge comes, and more,
Now it remains to choose sounds from the natural piano, like
The sounds of Halak, or the sounds of Mechus, or the sounds of Metok, and these will be the names of the natural messages that came to humans, following the actions they did.
This is how a human language is created, which is a language of names of natural information. Every word in the human language is
The name of natural knowledge - following an action.
It is impossible to create human language with the help of the sounds emanating from the throat, because the sounds are just noise.
If the voices are names of natural information following an action in physical reality, then the language is created immediately, and it can be used.
All linguists in the last 100 years have used the noise emanating from their throats to create human language.
All these linguists have failed. And as a result of this failure, the Nesbari Law appeared saying:
You cannot study a language through its words.
Neurolinguistics began to create a human language, which is a language of names of natural information.
The selection of names takes place with the help of the natural pianos of humans, which are capable of producing many sounds.
Humans easily invented thousands of languages, because they
They knew - that language is invented by actions, not by words.
The linguists of the last 100 years did not know that language is invented by actions, and they spoke, and spoke,
And they spoke, and made a noise from their throats - which remained a noise.
Esbar's research began to explore language with the help of actions that bring a person natural knowledge, and he
A stream of success...
Neural linguistics, versus Chomsky's linguistics.
Neurolinguistics is completely new, and it is completely different from Chomsky's linguistics.
Chomsky's linguistics is based on words, which are scribbles of meaningless lines, so the failure of this linguistics is predictable.
There is no possibility to understand doodles, with the help of other doodles, whose names are words.
Neurolinguistics is based on actual actions
that man does, and these actions bring man
Miraculously, natural news.
A person touching a block of ice receives a very clear natural knowledge, and the person gives it an arbitrary name.
He achieves the arbitrary name with the help of his natural piano. capable of making many sounds.
People already know the natural knowledge that the name of consists of the sound k and the sound r
This whole process takes place with the help of natural intelligence.
A robot touching a block of ice has no natural intelligence, and no natural knowledge. The robot has artificial intelligence, and it can measure the temperature of the contact, but it does not have a clear natural knowledge of the contact with a block of ice.
A person has such clear natural knowledge.
The robot - I don't know
There is a profound difference between artificial and natural intelligence. Natural intelligence belongs to a person who obtains natural knowledge as a result of an act he does.
Artificial intelligence is limited, and will never reach the natural intelligence of a human.
There are many expectations from artificial intelligence, and neural linguistics lowered the level of expectations, to a simple mechanical level.
Neurolinguistics is a song of praise for the knowledgeable person
A. Asbar
Maybe we are more similar to a random person sitting next to us than we are to that kid in the nursery we were many years ago?
We are shaped by impulses/emotions that are influenced by genetic expression with the physical and social environment,
On top of that, our social stratum is also shaped, in which the different languages are a central part,
Our impulses/emotions are in constant close interaction sometimes overlapping with the part of us that was shaped by accumulated knowledge of thousands of years of human society,
The new type of AI imitates the outer shell of the person without the system of impulses and desires (they are dynamos) which are a kind of backbone in human thinking,
It is likely that in the future the external boundaries between us and AI will decrease, although as long as it is a system that does not feel there will be a difference
Between us and these systems, it will be a system that is a simulation of consciousness, even a person who is a system with emotions such as empathy for another can turn off parts of his emotions, which can come from social influence, but the AI system will not have any component of emotions that can be turned on at all, it will only be possible to explain them to him The external effects of emotions, but to really understand what emotions are, to feel empathy for the suffering and sadness of another consciousness is something that must be experienced from the inside,
Like a system that analyzes light spectra brings you a number but doesn't see colors like systems that have consciousness such as a person.