(Comment) – But what if the creation of language and its communication are fundamentally different from what LLMs are doing? What if language use is not just one more skill among many? What if LLMs are subtly altering how we communicate with one another and approach reality more generally? What if the dazzle of what LLMs produce is masking from us the ways in which these changes may be beginning to occur? And what if the purported gains and losses will in fact be the reverse of what developers and investors are forecasting—that is, what if the downsides are universalized and democratized while only a select handful of highly talented people will be able to resist them? 

Three lines of psychology research from the latter half of the twentieth century suggest that an uncritical adoption of LLMs might set us on track to lose something unique in our humanity. (Read More)