> What does it mean for linguistics now that human beings are increasingly using natural language to interact with computers?
Yeah, it's going to be strange. So much of our etiquette and norms and basic cultural assumption have to do with this idea:
This communication protocol of "language" is for humans. If something else is "on the wire" with us, it must be like us, and worthy of our attention or cycles. But this is increasingly going to be very untrue.
Well, in my case, I was struggling to come up with a coherent understanding for myself about how views of language might need to change when interaction with LLMs is taken into account. ChatGPT’s response helped me think about the issue more clearly. Others might not find the same clarity.
More probably (most) humans will realize that talking to computers is not very interesting or productive, and decide it is in fact not worthy of our attention or cycles. Much like a an extremely fancy phone menu system.
Yeah, it's going to be strange. So much of our etiquette and norms and basic cultural assumption have to do with this idea:
This communication protocol of "language" is for humans. If something else is "on the wire" with us, it must be like us, and worthy of our attention or cycles. But this is increasingly going to be very untrue.
Culture is about to be weird.