Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 3:00
#AskAnExpert | Jean Berko Gleason - Language / Psycholinguistics / Why Do We SAY WHAT WE SAY?
If you're listening to this, you are listening to this because you probably like language somewhat. You're on swell. And we're talking. And talking is a great use of our time because with language comes expression, comes connection. And I'm a big fan. I've never gotten into language as a study, and I know that there's so many layers to how we speak, why we speak, what forms in our minds to get us to speak
We have not changed the way we acquire language since prehistory. We've been talking for several hundred thousand years, if not a million. So that's very built into our brain. But let me sort of finish this off very quickly by saying that I think that what's changed is that reading and writing have changed, that we have a different thing that's happened here with the kinds of communication that we have these days. I think there's a lot less effort being put into reading and into writing
You. Hi, Gene. Welcome to Swell. Very, very thrilled to have you with us. I have two questions for you. Large language models are all the rage right now, so I'm sure many people have asked you about it. So I would love to understand your perspective on large language models and Chat GPT more broadly and just just your taking it as a linguist, as somebody who's in this field and studies language at so many different levels
Swell Team
@Swell · 0:15
People said things like, well, what could you do with them? And they sat around holding their head, saying things like, well, maybe you could put recipes in them. Nobody had a clue what we were going to do with computers. So I think that's where we are with the large language model set. They have immense potential, but they're not there. Now, in terms of understanding, your second question, I think that no, of course they could fool us
Binati Sheth
@Binati_Sheth · 5:00
With regards to language and what our generation has done to language, I always want to say that with every iteration, language kind of has changed, and we don't speak the same English that was spoken, say, in the 15th century. It keeps changing, right? We can't just blame the younger generation for what has happened to language per se. But this thing that you said, language hasn't changed, writing and reading has