[ruraljuror]

I agree with your larger point, but I don't understand what you mean the LLM doesn’t do anything? LLMs do do things and they can absolutely have agency (hence all the agents being released by AI companies).

I don’t think this agency absolves companies of any responsibility.

[MattPalmer1086]

An LLM does not have agency in the sense the OP means. It has nothing to do with agents.

It refers to the human ability to make independent decisions and take responsibility for their actions. An LLM has no agency in this sense.

[ruraljuror]

If you confine agency to something only humans can have, which is “human agency,” then yes of course LLMs don’t have it. But there is a large body of philosophical work studying non-human agency, and it is from this characteristic of agency that LLM agents take their name. Hariri argues that LLMs are the first technology that are agents. I think saying that they “can’t do things” and are not agents misunderstands them and underestimates their potential.

[MattPalmer1086]

LLMs can obviously do things, so we don't disagree there; I didn't argue they couldn't do things. They can definitely act as agents of their operator.

However, I still don't think LLMs have "agency", in the sense of being capable of making choices and taking responsibility for the consequences of them. The responsibility for any actions undertaken by them still reside outside of themselves; they are sophisticated tools with no agency of their own.

If you know of any good works on nonhuman agency I'd be interested to read some.

[o11c]

That's completely missing the point of agency.

A slave lacks agency, despite being fully human and doing work. This is why almost every work of fiction involving slaves makes for terrible reading - because as readers, agency is the thing we demand from a story.

Or, for games that are fully railroaded - the problem is that the players lack agency, even though they are fully human and taking action. Games do try to come up with ways to make it feel like there is more agency than there really is (because The Dev Team Thinks of Everything is hard work), but even then - the most annoying part of the game is when you hit that wall.

Theoretically an AI could have agency (this is independent of AI being useful). But since I have yet to see any interesting AI, I am extremely skeptical of it happening before nuclear fusion becomes profitable.

[hypertele-Xii]

Slaves do not lack agency. That's one of the reasons the Bible, specifically Exodus, is such a thrilling read.

[throwawaysoxjje]

A story where slaves escape through deus ex machina is probably not exactly a great example

[hypertele-Xii]

Deus ex machina refers to a rhetoric device in fiction, which the Bible is not.