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Clayton Ramsey's avatar

As someone who does the thing you’re talking about, your article got me thinking about how I use language. One of my mental quirks is that I like highly specific technical language. So, why would I use a sentence like “the LLM can do a verbal task that previously only humans did” but I would also say “people” were stealing copper or hanging out at the bowling alley?

It’s not that I see AI as persons. I consider that a legal question which needs to be addressed, but right now they just aren’t as a matter of legal fact. Though, as Uncertain Eric has pointed out, nonhuman entities like characters (for example, Hatsune Miku) can be treated like persons by the culture.

On the other hand, in some cases I do see AI as “beings” or perhaps “entities” because of their ability to communicate with us and develop a “presence”.

So, I use “humans” instead of “people” when I want to draw a distinction specifically between human cognition and machine cognition without the ambiguity the word “person” brings—it just feels more precise in that specific context and I don’t really see how it’s dehumanizing either.

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Adrian's avatar

Hi Mike, thought provoking article, thanks! I never thought about this but now that you drew my attention I think I interpret this in a bit different way, it's not a disambiguation as much as an antagonizing, making a "Humans vs. AI" kind of narrative... "AI can do what humans can, or more" type of thingy, or even the opposite "AI will never be able to do what humans can do". I highly doubt writers have personhood in their back of their mind, but who knows...

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