Talking with Language Models

Key points

• When we interact with large language models (LLMs), are we having a conversation?1
• The "conversation" is a user's solo performance, interpretive labour disguised by interface and artifact design.1
• Questions about what 'I' and 'you' refer to in AI exchanges, about whether systems can lie or be held to promises, about the identity of our supposed interlocutors all rest on a false presupposition.1
• What feels like dialogue with someone is interaction with an artifact that generates text at unprecedented scale and fit.1

Sources (1)

• [1]Talking with Language Models
  arXiv (AI, ML, NLP, CV, robotics, multi-agent) · Oct 6, 08:12 PM

  We introduce the artifactual stance, a framework that reconceives human-AI interaction as artifact-mediated exchanges of candidate texts.

  When we interact with large language models (LLMs), are we having a conversation?

Extractive summary: sentences quoted from the sources.