Large Language Models, Agency, and Why Speech Acts are Beyond Them (For Now) - A Kantian-Cum-Pragmatist Case
Journal
Philosophy & Technology
Type
journal article
Date Issued
2024-02
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Luciano Floridi
Abstract
This article sets in with the question whether current or foreseeable transformer-based large language models (LLMs), such as the ones powering OpenAI's ChatGPT, could be language users in a way comparable to humans. It answers the question negatively, presenting the following argument. Apart from niche uses, to use language means to act. But LLMs are unable to act because they lack intentions. This, in turn, is because they are the wrong kind of being: agents with intentions need to be autonomous organisms while LLMs are heteronomous mechanisms. To conclude, the article argues, based on structural aspects of transformer-based LLMs, that these LLMs have taken a first step away from mechanistic artificiality to autonomous self-constitution, which means that these models are (slowly) moving into a direction that someday might result in non-human, but equally non-artificial agents, thus subverting the time-honored Kantian distinction between organism and mechanism.
Language
English (United States)
Keywords
Speech act
Agency
Large language model
Kant
Organism
Searle
Mechanism
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
Refereed
Yes
Publisher
Springer
Subject(s)
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Name
2402_organism_philtech.pdf
Size
387.02 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
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