Who are we talking to when we talk to these bots? - Colin Fraser
link to article (medium.com, "34 minute read")
this article is really good , i learned a lot reading it myself and its also something id recommend to anyone who wants or needs to understand the true nature of llm chatbots better . it really cuts through the bullshit to like an uncommon degree.
the main thrust here isn't an argument for a particular position; rather it poses a certain re-framing of the process of using chatgpt, from "conversation with a bot" to "authoring a fictional transcript between two characters." from the article:
You might object to this characterization as needlessly pedantic or academic. Who cares if it’s a chat or a shared Google doc? What’s the difference between providing the user’s lines in a dialogue with a fictional character, and simply chatting with a bot? If the bot says that it’s ChatGPT, rather than “a fictional ChatGPT character”, who am I to claim otherwise? What’s the material difference between something that “feels like a conversation” and a conversation? But I hope that I can convince you that the distinction is in fact very important. Among the many reasons it’s important is that it has direct implications about the way that the system behaves, as I will demonstrate with examples. It provides some guidance on how to interpret its output. Most importantly, I believe, it should inform the very way that we conceptualize this system in relation to the world—whether and how it is dangerous (it is), whether it should or shouldn’t have rights (it shouldn’t), whether it will get better over time (hard to say), and just how scared it should make us (a bit).
for me, this distinction did wind up feeling very important, and the way it's explained felt at times revelatory, at times like it put words to an intuitive understanding i was unable to describe myself. i've been sharing this article around and talking about this reframe in conversations in my life, because i think its really powerful for diffusing the lies and illusions openai and its competitors have so aggressively developed and promoted around these products.