Striking contrast between the attitude toward parroting in current AI debates (#EmilyBender, #TimnitGebru et al.) and that of Lawrence #Lessig in relation to Creative Commons.
For Bender & co., parroting signals a lack of creativity and understanding:
‘an LM is a system for haphazardly stitching together sequences of linguistic forms
it has observed in its vast training data, according to probabilistic
information about how they combine, but without any reference to meaning: a stochastic parrot.'
https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3442188.3445922
For Lessig, it’s a core feature of creative productivity. Writing about how, from Buster Keaton’s ‘Steamboat Bill, we got Steamboat Willie, and from Steamboat Willie, we got Mickey Mouse, and from Mickey Mouse, the Disney Corporation’, Lessig notes how Walt Disney ‘was always parroting the feature length mainstream films’.
https://scholarworks.umt.edu/mlr/vol65/iss1/1/
#digital #parrot
#tech #ai
#ArtificialIntelligence #disney #creativecommons #creativity