Language
Language as a tool for talking versus a tool for thinking, in people and in AI.
5 essays, newest first
- The Vector Does a model actually understand, or just predict words? Meaning is not stored as words. It is stored as vectors, and language is only the zip file we ship them in. Part 4 of Not So Artificial.
- There Is a New Voter in the Room: Words, Quantum Collapse and LLMs The quantum analogy for words, tested: how a finished sentence shapes reality for you, your listener and the LLM, and why AI defends its first answer. Part 17 of Not So Artificial.
- The Measure of Misunderstanding If two people unpack the same word into different concepts, the size of that gap is not random. It is a distance, and distance can be measured.
- The Analogy Engine: Why AI Keeps Reusing the Same Analogies Asked 20 times how memory works, one AI model said library 20 times. Why ChatGPT and other models reuse the same analogies, and the fix: name the listener.
- A Word Is Not a Concept Fei-Fei Li says language models are ungrounded. She named the wrong gap. The case that meaning is built by analogy, not by a body.
