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by Forgeties79 35 days ago
“I used Claude to…” “I tried to X using Claude” etc

Anyway doesn’t matter. I’m just kind of whining, I probably should’ve never written that comment in the first place. I think it just sticks out to me unlike like a lot of common parlance in other industries, which can definitely steer into anthropomorphizing, because we’re seeing all kinds of issues with people attributing actual intelligence to these things or just experiencing general psychological distress because of them. Using language that ascribes human characteristics to describe using LLMs just feels weird in that context

2 comments

Given these machines are the product of massive intentional and increasingly successful efforts to humanize computers, increased anthropomorphization is appropriate.

The behavior/attribute overlap isn't a coincidence or misunderstanding, it is by design.

In case of "ask", that describes our behavior not the machines.

But if a machine is able to recall and use some fact fluently then it makes sense to say it "knows" it. We routinely use words like "know", without any confusion, when talking about simpler lifeforms that are far less human-like than these models.

None of the above means the machine feels pain, is conscious, has a continuous identity, etc. Yet.

I say "I asked Python to".