{"id":839791,"date":"2026-09-07T19:32:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T19:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/839791\/"},"modified":"2026-09-07T19:32:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T19:32:08","slug":"how-to-talk-to-a-machine-without-anthropomorphising-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/839791\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Talk To A Machine Without Anthropomorphising It"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>LLMs remain a divisive topic in these times. Perhaps we all know someone who\u2019s become over-infatuated with their new robotic friend, or who believes it has made them a genius. [Emily M. Bender] and [Nanna Inie] have written about how people anthropomorphise the LLMs they interact with, <a href=\"https:\/\/buttondown.com\/maiht3k\/archive\/how-to-talk-about-ai-without-adding-to-the\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">and suggested some language tips to avoid that<\/a>. It\u2019s a couple of months old, but we think Hackaday readers will find it interesting.<\/p>\n<p>Their analysis is interesting, because it looks at the way people talk about LLMs and highlights the unconscious anthropomorphism. The LLM is a piece of software not a person, so why does it \u201crecognise\u201d when it does \u201cspeech recognition\u201d, for example. They suggest \u201cautomatic transcription\u201d instead. Even \u201challucination\u201d implies cognisance that evidently isn\u2019t there. They admit that their suggestion of \u201cundesirable output\u201d isn\u2019t entirely appropriate. They\u2019re on safer ground with \u201cinput\u201d and \u201coutput\u201d instead of \u201cprompt\u201d and \u201cresponse\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Whatever your views on them, it\u2019s evident that LLM usage will be a feature of the world for the forseeable future. The language surrounding them is however capable of evolving, and maybe some of the suggestions here are worth taking note of.<\/p>\n<p>Grappling with our new electronic overlords? Have a look at our <a href=\"https:\/\/hackaday.com\/2026\/04\/08\/ai-for-the-skeptics-pick-your-reasons-to-be-excited\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">AI for Skeptics<\/a> series.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LLMs remain a divisive topic in these times. Perhaps we all know someone who\u2019s become over-infatuated with their&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":839792,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[79],"class_list":["post-839791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=839791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/839792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=839791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=839791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=839791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}