One of the authors of the Stochastic Parrots paper explains what it actually means.
It’s been a dizzying few weeks of “is AI reasoning and / or alive” discourse, with the attendant pushback that these systems are just fancy autocomplete. But back in March, Margaret Mitchell, one of the authors of the famous Stochastic Parrots paper, took to Medium to clarify something: AI, as a whole, is not a stochastic parrot — LLMs are. Critics are missing a fundamental difference between the two technologies, even though they’re related. The post has been going back around, and it’s worth a read.
TL;DR
- Margaret Mitchell, author of the 'Stochastic Parrots' paper, clarified a distinction in AI discourse.
- She stated that AI as a whole is not a stochastic parrot, but LLMs are.
- Critics are reportedly overlooking a fundamental difference between AI and LLMs.
- The clarification addresses recent discussions about AI's reasoning and consciousness.