Stochastic Parrots Day: March 17, 2023
Since the publication of On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?🦜nearly three years ago, many of the harms the paper has warned about and more, have unfortunately occurred. From exploited workers filtering hateful content, to an engineer claiming that chatbots are sentient, the harms are only accelerating. The listed co-authors of the paper and various guests reflected on what happened in the world of LLMs, in the two years since the paper's publication.
Audio paper
Do you prefer an audio version of the paper? You're in luck because our paper has now been released in audio format. Take a listen.
On the Perils of Parrots
Spritewrench created this fun game based on our stochastic parrots paper! Try out the game and/or buy it on the Steam website.
Is My Toddler a Stochastic Parrot?
Angie Wang's illustrated essay for the New Yorker, wondering whether her child's early attempts at speech were the same as LLMs, was a finalist for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize. "A toddler has a life, and learns language to describe it. An L.L.M. learns language but has no life of its own to describe," she writes.
French translation
Here is a summary of our paper translated into Français/French, by @CortexNihilo.
Stochastic Parrots Day reading list
The 3,300 hundred attendees and us apparently discussed 137 works! Thanks to Mirabelle Jones, this reading list is now assembled in a doc that you can read.
Science for the People's Article
Esther Sánchez García and Michael Gasser wrote an article in Spanish for Science for the People summarizing our paper.
Stochasitic Parrot Hoodie?
Mark Riedl, who also was a panelist in our Stochastic Parrots Day events, designed a Stochastic Parrot hoodie, with proceeds donated to the ACLU.
Stochasitic Parrot Sticker?
Speaking of merch, Ruth Starkman designed Stochastic Parrots stickers. She might have some left!
Stephen Fry Talks about Stochastic Parrots!
We've gone mainstream. Stephen Fry talks about Stochastic Parrots, and even mentions Emily by name!
You Are Not a Parrot
While writing this thorough profile of Emily for New York Magazine, Elizabeth Weil reminds us that we are not parrots!
Stochastic Parrots is AI Related Word of 20223!
The American Dialect Society named "Stochastic Parrots" AI related word of the year. Read this Wall Street Journal article by Ben Zimmer to learn more about the phrase Stochastic Parrots.
We Warned About "Sentient AI"
Timnit and Margaret wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post reminding everyone that they had warned Google that people could believe its LLMs were sentient.
More Media Coverage
Emily has curated a list of additional media coverage on stochastic parrots.