Arts & Letters Daily has again pointed me in the direction of some salient commentary on current iterations of the vast universes of the online world.
An article on a site called The Verge entitled "You sound like ChatGTP" has more than a few intriguing observations about the way our language is changing in response to the onslaught of Large Language Models like ChatGTP on online and offline content.
So let's briefly try to "adeptly" "delve" here on the "Realm" into some of this article's insights, even if we may not be overly"meticulous". Apparently in the 18 months since ChatGPT was first released, the use of the above four words in"quotation marks" has increased in usage by up to 51% more than 3 years ago. These words seem to align with those that the ChatGTP model favours, according to the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. What's this all about and what might be the consequences and potential reactions?
According to the article:
"...“Delve” has become an academic shibboleth, a neon sign in the middle of every conversation flashing ChatGPT was here."
And it's not just vocabulary that's being influenced by these AI assistants, it's also style:
"
AI influence is starting to show up in tone, too — in the form of longer, more structured speech and muted emotional expression. "
And this is having unanticipated consequences:
"...if people believed their partner was using AI in the interaction, they rated their partner as less collaborative and more demanding... We form perceptions based on language cues.."
The article cites Mor Naaman of Cornell Tech for the proposal that the use of AI causes at least 3 reductions human communication: reduced signs of authenticity like vulnerability; signalling of lack of effort by the author to a reader; and the absence of a sense of humour and/or self deprecation.
It is suggested that these tendencies, including reduced trust in nearly all non face to face communications and the stereotyping caused by the imprecise approximations of the AI sampling process, are causing a growing chasm between templated formal and business communications and authentic expression in private emotional environments.
Naaman expresses the view that the big risk is that, as AI adapts and becomes more personally convincing over time, we may lose the ability to distinguish the real from the manufactured and thereby lose conscious control over our own thought processes.
The article concludes with the observation:
" ..This isn’t a question about whether AI will continue shaping how we speak — because it will — but whether we’ll actively choose to preserve space for the verbal quirks and emotional messiness that make communication recognizably, irreplaceably human."
This only reinforces the intention of this site to continue to try to be as conspicuously messy, care free and non-conformist as we can.
Long live the tactile, smelly, infuriating and gratifying worlds of gardening, sailing, poetry, love and cooking!
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