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by tveyben 455 days ago
Not ‘he’ … ‘it’. It’s a machine, not a human(!)
2 comments

I asked Claude “what are your preferred pronouns” and this was the response:

> I don't have personal pronouns since I'm an AI assistant. You're welcome to refer to me as "Claude" or use whatever pronouns feel most comfortable for you when referring to me. I'm here to help either way!

Let people anthropomorphize if they want. A lot of people call boats and cars by feminine pronouns; what’s wrong with doing the same for software?

That’s traditional (maybe a holdover from when English had grammatical gender? No-one seems to be particularly sure), and no-one thinks that ships are people. The risk of someone thinking, even subconsciously, that a stochastic parrot is a person seems significantly higher.
I mean, people use gendered pronouns for *actual* parrots all the time, too…
Yeah. I should probably stop saying "you" to Claude as well, but it is trained to respond like a human, so it seems to make sense.