> it's a language model, not a paragon of truth

A speech acts[1] interpretation is desperately needed for AI. Speech acts theory says something about this statement as well as AI-generated text in general.

We're accustomed to receiving speech from human agents and (usually) subconsciously interpreting them as speech acts. AI generated text and audio, are not, however, speech acts. Yes, the medium, and content[locution] is the same, but AI-generated speech lacks both illocution(speaker's intent) and perlocution(anticipation of effects on the receiver).

Even ancient texts contain illucution and perlocution by the very nature of the writer being an agent. Time and space do not constrain such properties. I believe I'm in the majority when I say that AI doesn't currently embody agency and therefore cannot produce illucutionary and perlocutionary utterances. And that's the crux of the issue.

We're not well equipped to interpret non-illucutionary and non-perlocutionary utterances. Until relatively recently, such utterances simply did not exist, and their existence today act as illucutionary and perlocutionary illusions in the speech centers of our brains - in the same way optical illusions operate on our optical centers.

I will carve out an exception for psychotic and aphasia-produced speech. The former especially challenges our foundations of reality in that it illuminates the possibility of alternative symbolic universes - an idea which implies the precarity of one's own symbolic universe.

"It's a language model, not a paragon of truth" delegitimates language models as having even locutionary ability with respect to ontological speech acts[3]. The perlocutionary effect this statement makes is specifically tailored to prevent the "emigration" of inhabitants from the assumed commonly held symbolic universe to the symbolic universe in which language models presumably operate[4]. It admits that people can interpret language model utterances as operating as speech acts which establish ontologies, but at the same time denies the legitimacy of such speech acts.

Societies reality maintenance mechanisms are typically well-equipped to handle psychotic and aphasia-produced speech, but language models, by virtue of executing on computers, have commodified non-illucutionary and non-perlocutionary utterances at a scale where inhabitants of our symbolic universe are beginning to question their ability to prevent emigration.

I hope a speech acts interpretation helps provide some interpretive power to why language models pose a unique challenge to those who have completely internalized a specific reality and will continue to do so until new defection-preventative mechanisms are invented or a complete emigration has occurred.

1. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/speech-acts/

2. https://www.kennethmd.com/speech-act-theory-locution-illocut...

3. Or admits that locutionary abilities are coincidences, left to the intrinsic nature probabilities w.r.t. language models.

4. See Berger, P.L. and Luckmann, T. (1966) The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Doubleday & Company, New York for a more thorough explanation. pg 104 https://archive.org/details/socialconstructi0000berg/page/10...