The ubiquity of audio commutation technologies, particularly telephone, radio, and TV, have had a significant affect on language. They further spread English around the world making it more accessible and more necessary for lower social and economic classes, they led to the blending of dialects and the death of some smaller regional dialects. They enabled the rapid adoption of new words and concepts.

How will LLMs affect language? Will they further cement English as the world’s dominant language or lead to the adoption of a new lingua franca? Will they be able to adapt to differences in dialects or will they force us to further consolidate how we speak? What about programming languages? Will the model best able to generate usable code determine what language or languages will be used in the future? Thoughts and beliefs generally follow language, at least on the social scale, how will LLM’s affects on language affect how we think and act? What we believe?

  • MudMan
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    4 months ago

    Wait, who says it is the dominant branch of “AI development”? What does that mean, in fact? Who says it was telephone and radio that led to English hegemony? Who said thoughts and beliefs follow language? Most of the people I know in related fields seem to think that’s widely disproved. I mean, no bad questions, but there’s a TON of built-in assumptions in the OP and not all of them check out.

    FWIW, I don’t know that generated language gets to change much if it’s generated by inferring likely language from human sources. At most there may be a newfound premium on using original, spontaneous sounding language in writing just to prove one’s humanity by distinguishing from bland, generated language, but I suppose even that depends on how the tech moves forward.