Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.

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Now that AI generated text is mostly indistinguishable from human text, AI may start influencing the evolution of our language. (lemm.ee)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/showerthoughts

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Given that language is an important lens through which we see the world, AI could subtly alter our perceptions and beliefs over the coming years, decades, and centuries.

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[–] antonim 1 points 1 year ago

Human language change happens first of all because the reality that the language is meant to represent changes. I.e. you create a new thing, you create a new name for it too.

ChatGPT does not intend to represent a reality when it uses a language. It does not even know of a reality outside of its language.

Human language also changes due to various rather vague "economic" reasons, e.g. simplified pronunciation, merging sounds, developing some new habits in grammar that spread within one community but do not spread elsewhere... For example, we have extremely obvious proof that Latin developed into Italian, French, Spanish, Romanian, etc., so language change clearly isn't some magical process. On the other hand, if you fed a ton of ancient Latin into ChatGPT, it wouldn't even develop the pronunciation of medieval Latin used by priests, much less the totally different descendant languages that developed at the time.