Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by MarsIronPI 102 days ago
Please don't anthropomorphize LLMs even further by assigning them gendered pronouns. LLMs are always "it"s. They're not alive, they're just really complicated linear algebra expressions. Prematurely anthropomorphizing them, even subtly like this, will come back to bite us if we keep doing it.
3 comments

Why not? Claude is a male name, and the model behaves close enough to a human that I think it's fine to refer to it as a he or a she. Also note that some languages don't have neutral pronouns and it's perfectly fine to say a mosquito is a "he", and a spider a "she" for instance. Are they more humans than a LLM?
Can you defend that though? Does living mean needing cells? Does it mean possessing the ability to think and reason? Is Claude thinking and reasoning?
I just think that if I treat my AI GF like that she'll just pout and end up giving me the silent treatment and I'll have to reboot her.