studyguide:llms [Linguistics Resources]

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{{:studyguide:no-llm-sign.png?100 |}}Large language models are mindless algorithms, trained on the linguistic products of countless individuals and programmed to regurgitate statistical averages across this training data. They do not know, they do not understand, they do not reason, they do not create. They cannot be right or wrong. They replace human thought and human speech with a travesty of human thought and human speech. They serve no-one except for the technocrats that deploy them. Their use is antithetical to everything the arts the humanities and the sciences stand for, and hinders the personal development of their users. They have no place in teaching or research.

In work submitted in our lectures and seminars — presentations, essays, term papers, etc. —, large-language models may not be used for any purpose. This prohibition covers not only the use of LLMs as an alternative to human brainstorming and research or their use to generate text that is subsequently used as part of written or spoken assignments, it also extends to the use of LLMs for the purpose of translation, summarization proof-reading and other seemingly low-level tasks.

If we have reason to suspect that you have used an LLM in any of these or other ways, we will expel you from the lecture or seminarIt is our job to aid you in developing your capacity to read, to research, to understand and to write, so that you will have these skills long after LLMs have poisoned the libraries of human knowledge and reduced their users to helpless prompt-givers. But you have to want it too.