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As a native German speaker, I have also referred to a chatbot in English as "he", and similar to you, a native English speaker, felt jarred by it. It was defini
by dsvf 5mo ago
As a native German speaker, I have also referred to a chatbot in English as "he", and similar to you, a native English speaker, felt jarred by it. It was definitely not out of any personification or humanization though. In German, I would say it is "der Chatbot" (from "der Roboter"), which in German is a male noun so I would refer to it as "er" (the male pronoun) - which in my head I autotranslated to "he". Most of the time, though, I think of it (and refer to it) as an LLM, which is "das Sprachmodell" (neutrum), so I automatically translate it to "it".
So that's another, maybe more harmless reason for it.
- golem14 5mo agoI mean, both in English and in german, that's how you would talk to a dog. "Er hat in die Ecke gepinkelt"/"He peed in the corner" (or "she", if it's a female dog). I don't know what is jarring talking about the chatbot like that. It may be creepier if you said "she wrote that program for me" as you now assign a specific gender to the chatbot.
- Hasnep 5mo agoIt's how you'd talk about a dog that you know the sex of, but if you didn't know you'd probably use "it". An LLM doesn't have a sex or gender, so I think the natural way to refer to them is "it".
- golem14 5mo agoin English, maybe. In German, not really. "Der Bot", "der Robot", "der Computer".
- golem14 5mo agoHowever, "die AI", "Kuenstliche Intelligenz".
- NekkoDroid 5mo agoAlso, "Es hat in die Ecke gepinkelt". Which pronoun you use is just as dependent on the context as in english.
- golem14 5mo agoI have not met a single German that has ever uttered this sentence. (Relating to a dog, that is)
- NekkoDroid 5mo agoNeither have I, but mostly because either the person knows the gender of the animal or the situation just never came up. The closest that I would say is "Es scheißt gerne aufs Auto" when talking about pidgens (die Taube), but even then you generally talk about multiple, resulting in "Sie scheißen gerne aufs Auto"
- golem14 5mo agoReally ? "Es kackt auf's Auto" ? I guess, it might make sense when the person speaking has no specific bird on mind, but only thinks of "das Tier" (the animal). One could also say "er hat .. geckack (der Vogel)", but usually, people wouldn't say "er/sie/es", but use the fully specified noun ("die Taube ... hat..", "der Vogel ht ...", "ein Tier hat ...") "Es kackt auf's Auto" feels slightly weird to me, if I didn't know whodunnit, I'd probably say something like "irgendwer hat mir aufs Auto gekackt" ("someone pooped on the car"), although there is a also "irgendwas hat mir aufs Auto gekackt" ("something pooped on the car"). My guess is the majority of German would choose the first sentence and anthropomorphize, but maybe I'm projecting. It's an interesting question, after all. Thanks for bringing it up, haven't talked about pooping on cars for a while ;)
- bharat1010 5mo agohow does that matter if its he, 'she' till its doing the work. Its artificial, shouldnt try to find means of attachment to it
- pclmulqdq 5mo ago"Der Computer" is also masculine, so you have probably been calling your computer "he" for decades. Languages with gendered nouns don't quite have the same he/she/it distinction.