Comment by Nevermark
8 days ago
> I think such influence will be extremely minimal.
AI will accelerate “natural” change in language like anything else.
And as AI changes our environment (mentally, socially, and inevitably physically) we will change and change our language.
But what will be interesting is the rise of agent to agent communication via human languages. As that kind of communication shows up in training sets, there will be a powerful eigenvector of change we can’t predict. Other than that it’s the path of efficient communication for them, and we are likely to pick up on those changes as from any other source of change.
Seems very unlikely. My parent said the effects have already started (but provided no evidence), so I assume you mean by less then a generation. I am not a linguist but I would like to see evidence of such rapid shifts ever occurring in anywhere the history of languages before I believe either of you.
I have a feeling you only have a feeling, but not any credible mechanism in which such language shifts can occur.
I am a little confused. Every year language changes. Young people, tech, adapting ideologies, words and concepts adopted from other languages, the list of language catalysts is long and pervasive.
Language has never stood still.
GPs original claim was “[Machine Intelligence] already is influencing the grammar and patterns we use.”
Your claim above was “AI will accelerate “natural” change in language like anything else.”
Now these are different claims, but I assumed you were backing up your parent’s claim. These are far stronger claims than what you write now, in a way that it feels like you are arguing in Motte and Bailey.
First of all if GP claim is true, linguists should be able to find evidence of that and publish their findings in a peer review papers. To my knowledge, they have not done that.
Second of all, your claim about AI “accelerating” changes in natural language is also unfounded, unless you really mean “like everything else”, in which case your claim is extremely weak to the point where it is a non-claim (meaning, you are not even wrong[1]).
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong
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