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Last Words: Large Language Models and the AI Apocalypse
Paperback
LinguisticsTechnology & EngineeringGeneral Computers
Publisher Price: $13.95
ISBN13: 9781734643558
Publisher: Prickly Paradigm Press
Published: Sep 5 2024
Pages: 60
Weight: 0.26
Height: 0.40 Width: 4.50 Depth: 6.90
Language: English
What kind of meaning can machines make--and why does it matter that it's not the same as ours?
Anthropologist Paul Kockelman's Last Words offers a rigorous but accessible account of how large language models actually work--and why the meaning they produce is fundamentally different from human meaning-making. Drawing on the semiotics of C.S. Peirce, Kockelman's witty and insightful pamphlet shows how LLMs are trained to predict word-word relations, not word-world relations, which explains both their uncanny fluency and their systematic blind spots. The result is a compact, essential guide to cutting through the hype: not a dismissal of AI, but a precise account of what it can and cannot do--and who profits from the confusion.
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