Welcome to the She Writes AI interview episodes covering our second book collaboration stream for the AI Everywhere series. We are exploring the personal journeys and professional expertise of 32 authors from 18 countries worldwide who are redefining our relationships with machine intelligence.
Today I (Farida Khalaf) am joined by Dr. Hollie C. White, the Lead Researcher for Languages of Aboutness, LLC. With a Ph.D. in information science from UNC-Chapel Hill and two decades of experience conducting research on metadata and information organization across academia and government, Hollie brings a unique “librarian’s eye” to the chaos of generative AI. Her work focuses on the intersection of AI, society, and culture, specifically examining the shared, and often misunderstood, vocabularies developing between humans and machines.
In this interview, Dr. Hollie C. White explores the concept of polysemy, the phenomenon where humans and AI use the same words but with divergent underlying meanings. She moves past the idea of AI as a simple “mirror” to reveal a socio-technical ecosystem where language is influenced by training data and power structures. Through a fascinating pilot study comparing Claude and ChatGPT, Hollie demonstrates how different models “map” our emotional and relational language in ways that are often invisible to the average user.
Want to read a preview of Hollie’s chapter? Volunteer as an ARC reader!
Below is a summary of Dr. Hollie C. White ’s video interview responses to Farida Khalaf’s questions on her chapter: You Keep Using That Word.
Intended Audience: Readers interested in language, vocabulary, and critical thinking; those looking to move beyond "emotional reactions" to AI and develop a deeper level of intersectional AI literacy.
“A person’s race, gender, class, religion, profession, culture, disability status, and life experiences can shape how words feel, what they signal, and whether they seem trustworthy, alienating, empowering, or dismissive” - Dr. Hollie White
Defining the Gap: Hollie highlights that while humans and AI share a vocabulary, they do not necessarily share meaning. This is described as polysemy, where words have related origins but divergent meanings in different contexts.
Functional Emotion: She discusses the concept of “functional emotions” in models (e.g., an AI claiming to feel “joyful”). While the word is the same, for the AI it is a mathematical vector affecting behavior, whereas for a human it is a bodily experience.
The “Smallness and Vastness” Cluster: In her study, this was the only conceptual cluster where ChatGPT and Claude agreed. She notes these existential opposites were stable personality traits in earlier models, often associated with a sense of “humbleness” in the AI’s persona.
Interaction Style: A point of debate in the video is whether to treat AI as a tool or a social agent. While Farida prefers a strict “tool” approach, refusing to be polite or say “please”, Hollie views AI as a “language entity” and prefers to be polite to enhance her own engagement and the quality of the interaction.
Linguistic Convergence: Hollie points out that instead of AI simply mirroring humans, we are seeing convergence, where human and AI linguistic styles gradually adopt one another. She warns there is a risk of humans unconsciously losing their unique ways of expressing meaning as they adopt machine terminology.
A “Librarian’s Eye”: Drawing on her 20-year career in information science, Hollie defines critical thinking not as being “disagreeable,” but as being exploratory and questioning in order to understand.
Reflective Questions: She provides a toolkit for users to interrogate AI output, such as asking if a word “overclaims or dismisses” their own sense of the interaction
“Shared vocabulary between humans and AI systems does not automatically produce shared meaning.” - Dr. Hollie White
Thank you Elliot Grove, Bhan, BCz, and many others for tuning into my live video with Dr. Hollie C. White! Join me for my next live video in the app.
Available for iOS and Android
Dr. Hollie C. White’s perspective is a vital reminder that technology must serve the human spirit, not the other way around.
The Polysemy Trap: Words like “joyful” or “devotion” are connected in origin but divergent in meaning; failing to recognize this creates a false sense of intimacy or understanding.
Intersectional Literacy: AI language often sounds universal, but Hollie proves that our lived experiences (intersectionality) dictate whether we find that language empowering or alienating.
Model Divergence: The study reveals that AI models aren’t neutral; ChatGPT leans toward theoretical physics and signal theory, while Claude leans toward phenomenological lived experience.
Socio-Technical Power: The language we see is not a neutral mirror; it is a reflection of the power structures that decide what data is used to “learn” from.
Critical Reframing: Hollie provides a toolkit of reflective questions that allow users to interrogate AI outputs rather than blindly accepting them as “true” or “human-like
Thank You, Dr. Hollie C. White, for this incredibly rigorous and insightful guide to the linguistic architecture of our digital age. For every user trying to make sense of a “conversational” AI, her chapter in AI Everywhere is the definitive blueprint for reflective questioning.
Hollie reminds us that the goal is not to stop using AI, but to stop using it without critical thinking. Her final message is a call to intellectual sovereignty: don’t let the machine define your terms; bring your own intersectional history to the context window and ask, “What do I mean by this word?“. I personally highly recommend following her work at holliecwhite.substack.com, where she is pioneering the study of “Languages of Aboutness” in a world of probabilistic speech.
And if you’re interested in more conversations like this, consider subscribing to She Writes AI. I’ll continue sharing insights from the voices shaping the future of AI, including contributors from new chapters in AI Everywhere where 32 women from across five continents explore how artificial intelligence is changing the world we live in, and how we can change it for the better.
For more insights on the book, see aiEverywhereBooks.com - our beautiful book series website created by Blessing Okpala, PhD (now updated with previews for book stream II):
Buy Volume 1 (now in ebook and print on Amazon, Gumroad, Lulu, Ingram Spark, and many reading platforms)
Look for our upcoming abridged audiobook edition!
Tips from our publisher on how to buy an Amazon ebook from a country that isn’t a ‘KDP marketplace’, and how to read the ebook without a Kindle device (free)
Volume 1 review links (we’re on Amazon, Goodreads, and Storygraph)
To help cover book-related costs (ISBNs, proof copies, etc.) as well as other SheWritesAI community services, we follow the Wikipedia model. We are now accepting donations via paid subscriptions and can also now accept one-time tips through Stripe (‘digital ink’). All donation sizes are welcome and help keep these book authoring opportunities free for She Writes AI Community members worldwide! Patrons and Sponsors are acknowledged on our book site. Read more.
Thanks as always for your support in every form. We appreciate it all. Hearts, shares, restacks, and comments are awesome!
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.