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Bluesky is having an odd little debate about use of the phrase "stochastic parrot" and how it appears to be the one phrase that just sends AI advocates into a rage, and I'm really torn, because while I'm in favor of making Ai advocates angry, I sincerely believe that parrots are capable of both understanding concepts and using language to intentionally communicate about their understandings of concepts. And I believe this is not true of LLMs
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mcc

"AI" debates

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Sharp Leaves

"AI" debates

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@Jay
in reply to Dan Ports
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mathew

@dan There are some awesome videos of parrots using YouTube to watch videos of other parrots.

youtube.com/watch?v=D_b8kWYvGkI

World's Most Intelligent Parrot 🦜 knows to operate the IPad & plays his favourite Video 😂😂

#trending #viral #love #youtubeshorts #trendingshorts #parrot #smartparrot #amazingfacts
Daily Life (YouTube)
@Dan Ports
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koro!! 🐳 ΘΔ

@mathew @dan parrots can learn how to video call their friends on a phone and choose to do so when given the choice!! smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/scientists-taught-pet-parrots-to-video-call-each-other-and-the-birds-l…

Scientists Taught Pet Parrots to Video Call Each Other—and the Birds Loved It

Wild parrots tend to fly in flocks, but when kept as single pets, they may become lonely and bored
Sarah Kuta (Smithsonian Magazine)
@Dan Ports @mathew
in reply to JP
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JP

fwiw while parrots are clearly bright and charming thinking beings with qualia interiority etc, scientists are still a bit conflicted over how similar / complex they are compared to us; as with chatbots their ability to mimic language really muddies our ability to accurately asses what's going on with them, because we hear one utter a complete sentence and our anthropomorphizing tendency tells us we're dealing with a human!
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JP

also there are other birds who are astonishingly good mimics who we've determined conclusively have way less going on cognitively than eg african gray parrots, they're just playing back little .flac files for us*, but it still gets us because language is so central to our perceptions of "intelligence".
* not to say it doesn't "mean something" to them!
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mcc

@jplebreton so an important thing about Irene pepperberg's research is she concludes the reason every researcher before her found zero evidence of parrot cognition and she found significant evidence of parrot cognition is that other researchers were assuming parrot cognition would resemble human cognition whereas she was working from a starting point of analyzing parrot behavior in the wild and the specific way wild parrots seem to approach learning
@JP
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Jens Finkhäuser

@jplebreton I mean, that's IMHO one of the major flaws of most research into animals' inner lives. That, and the inverse.

One particularly enraging study I read was about pain. Scientists electrocuted fish if they got near some place, and observed that when subjected to the electro shocks, the fish behaved much like humans would when subjected to pain. They also observed the fish avoided triggering the sensation.

Result? "It's inconclusive whether fish experience pain"

@JP
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Jens Finkhäuser

@jplebreton I get that you can't project human experience onto animals. But it's also true that "it behaves as if, but inconclusive" is pretty much a psychopath's response to other people.

So "cognition, but perhaps different" is a *massive* step, IMHO.

@JP
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GhostOnTheHalfShell

I might be tempted to redirect the conversation if I were to be found on a site like that which I won’t, to a discussion of Microsoft efforts to make sure that the sexually explicit material that can be generated with their systems is faithful to the prompt. Maybe they should be asked to install the value of paying people in Africa slave wages to experience on trauma. Let them work through that.
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⏩︎VOTE⏪︎ ᶜʸⁿⁱᶜⁱˢᵐ⁼ᵃᶜᶜᵉᵖᵗᵃⁿᶜᵉ (Ben Royce)

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david revoy has been illustrating the concept of the "stochastic parrot"

mastodon.social/@davidrevoy@framapiaf.org/117242009883276120

Mastodon

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David Revoy

2026-09-09 16:24:58

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AI Overused Expressions

Bonus speedpaint: peppercarrot.com/en/miniFantasyTheater/069.html#bonus

#webcomic #krita #miniFantasyTheater


69. AI Overused Expressions - Pepper&Carrot

Official homepage of Pepper&Carrot, a free(libre) and open-source webcomic about Pepper, a young witch and her cat, Carrot. They live in a fantasy universe of potions, magic, and creatures.
Pepper&Carrot

Cat 🐈🥗 (D.Burch) reshared this.

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Michael Cook

@mHtt IDK. I’m not a hardcore anti-AI person not an AI doomer or anything. I’ve found it useful for things. And I know people who use it I respect.

But the kind of person who goes around constantly trying to insert AI into every discussion and takes personal affront to even the mildest criticism of it is someone I’m ok with offending.

They have no interest in a discussion or nuance. They just want to shove their view in your face until you acquiesce.

@mHtt
in reply to Michael Cook
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mHtt

@foobarsoft true AI would be named.

Humans, I believe are incapable of true AI.

If you watch the Animatrix their thesis is that humans create the circumstances for AI; humans create intelligent machines, who in turn create AI.

I personally think this is much more likely. This emergent technology I would describe as 'Automatic Interaction' fashioned with plagiarism finesse by trillion are marketing algorithms.

@Michael Cook
Esta entrada fue editada (sábado, 3 de octubre de 2026, 4:02)
in reply to mHtt
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mHtt

@foobarsoft due to character limit.

I believe humans are creating a point in the kill chain that creates plausible deniability.

Send in a group of drones to kill a city of people. Blame the AI when things go bad.

That's what it's for, to remove accountability for killing.

@Michael Cook
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Michael Cook

@mHtt The name is marketing nonsense, but we’re stuck with it until (if) true artificial intelligence shows up.

As for your other point I don’t see that mattering. They don’t care now, they don’t need “AI” to blame, and I don’t think it being around makes a difference.

@mHtt
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Flipper 🐬🏳️‍🌈🌹

i believe it was meant to be from the verb "to parrot", used in the colloquial sense, rather than the animal. Or at least that's how I read it.

But I also understand how literal the internet can be. It's a little less accurate than "statistical text extruder", but a better analogy, imo.

in reply to Plan A to Y
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Jens Finkhäuser

@Plan_A_to_Y Same difference. The verb comes from a belief that parrots could never understand what they say.

Thing is, if you keep a pet like that - even budgies - you will notice that they may mimic sounds, but they don't mimic all sounds randomly in all situations. Their mimicry expresses a mood, and you can trace that back to the circumstances under which they learned the sound.

That does not mean they make sense of the words, but they do make sense.

@Plan A to Y
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SackOfBones (any/all)

Parrots are cool, and intelligent. I'd be going ballistic if the phrase was something to do with ants/other hymenopterans because they are really fucking smart. Just a fun fact, through a process called "freeing the tongue", crows can speak like parrots. I fully intend to train a murder of crows to scream run and unleash them into mountains to terrify mountaineers
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quixote

Yes! Parrots really are intelligent (in their own totally ruthless way).

I have a fairly good grasp of English and the phrase never made any sense to me. (What do you mean, "stochastic" and "parrot"? Parrots either are or they aren't. They don't pop into existence briefly and wink out, or you come in one morning and they're twice the size as yesterday. I had to find an explanation that said it referred to parroting 🙄 ) Plus, 'stochastic' isn't in most people's vocabularies.

Anyone who wants people to understand what they mean, call it autocomplete. Because that's what it _is_. Except it works on sentences and topics instead of single words.

And it does it with about as much insight, i.e. none, as you say. Like when you're trying to think of metempsychosis and it confidently tells you metamorphosis and you flunk your comparative religions term paper.

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mcc

@blinkygal mastodon.social/@mcc/117373884699461165

mcc

2026-10-02 23:22:28

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@lilyyllyyllyly If LLMs understand concepts and can communicate about those concepts, and merely use stochastic methods to go about it, then that is just a description of what AI advocates actually believe about their product

@dana
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Chandler Carruth

@blinkygal
Slightly different interpretation: it's not referring to the animal, but to something that without thought or understanding repeats words or imitates actions.

Basically, definition #2: dictionary.com/browse/parrot

It's entertaining that our language has so thoroughly taking this word from an analogy to the animal to its own meaning, and one that probably isn't accurate for the animal at all... =]

PARROT Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com

PARROT definition: any of numerous hook-billed, often brilliantly colored birds of the order Psittaciformes, as the cockatoo, lory, macaw, or parakeet, having the ability to mimic speech and often kept as pets.
www.dictionary.com
@dana
in reply to Newherehow
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Newherehow

In regards to why I don't just taunt "I know you are but what am I", that doesn't explicitly prove my argument. >>

P.S. Yes please block me, the less anti-AI slop I have on my timeline the happier I am.

Esta entrada fue editada (sábado, 3 de octubre de 2026, 2:51)
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TeflonTrout he/him

@Newhereish@mastodon.social @mcc

Great conversation and a free proactive block of a person with poor ethics, this thread has been a treat!

You can't separate ethics from the stochastic parrot discussion, if you use stochastic parrots you support climate change, deskilling people en masse, fascism, and the largest theft of workers' output in history. Get fucked slopsucker

@mcc
Esta entrada fue editada (sábado, 3 de octubre de 2026, 2:35)
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Jed Brown

Emily Bender agrees with you; this is a common misreading of the paper.

Folks have also pointed out that this coinage is somewhat unfair to actual parrots who, for all I know, do have internal lives and do use their ability to mimic human speech with some kind of communicative intent. My best answer here is to say that (despite parrot in stochastic parrot being a noun), I am drawing not on the name of the bird directly but rather on the English verb to parrot, which means to repeat back without understanding.
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D2

parrot = a bird showing individual intelligence. Hard agree with you.

Stochastic parrot = that added word isn’t a breed or narrowing ** Of Actual Parrots **; it’s a ‘not-really’ term. It’s like vegan leather or oat milk or … ok, I don’t like synthetic diamond, cuz chemically some are diamonds… uh… maybe silicone grout? A stochastic parrot is some thingy which _resembles_ a parrot.

(Offered entirely in hopes of tipping scales toward making AI fans stfu and stop anthropomorphizing their toys. I’m a fan of any tactic which gives them pause)

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Si Fuller

@cascheranno I love that story, because I've plucked chickens, it takes a really long time. A live one must be so much harder. And there probably weren't any chickens within easy reach. Diogenes' snappy rejoinder must have taken hours of prep work. They were probably talking about something completely different by the time he threw that poor abused hen at them.
@D2
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D2

agreed; I even like ‘parroter’ to clarify this adjectival form is pseudo-__, or synthetic / resembling, but not a parrot.

Hmm. The pair seems not quite an oxymoron (but close).

After much search, the grammatical term seems to be Privative Adjective / Modifier. More examples: Kangaroo Court, stuffed animal, synthetic turf.

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mcc

@fishidwardrobe mastodon.social/@mcc/117373884699461165

mcc

2026-10-02 23:22:28

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@lilyyllyyllyly If LLMs understand concepts and can communicate about those concepts, and merely use stochastic methods to go about it, then that is just a description of what AI advocates actually believe about their product

@Fish Id Wardrobe ⁂
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Three plus or minus five

I think the term is not insulting to parrots; the “stochastic” part is the important part. Like something being as useful as a chocolate teapot. It doesn’t degrade teapots.

But also, “parrot” is the verb we have for mindless repetition, fair or not.

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Simon Zerafa

This is the same issue as using clown as a pajorative.

Clowns are hard working professionals doing a difficult job for little pay.

Parrots and the Corvids are very intelligent, more so than some people and many AI wonks.

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Justin Skists

Unpopular opinion: there is nothing magical about AI.

Simplified: It's just a bunch of tokenised data that goes through a couple score billion if-statements with something analogous to a bunch of single-instruction-multiple-data 8-bit operations, resulting in an output of a bunch of tokenised data. And even that is done in a loop.

Wake me up when the weighted if-statements have analogue parameters, can manage multiple simultaneous dynamic inputs, and can be powered by a Mars bar and a mug of coffee. 😅

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mcc

@jskists "It's just a bunch of tokenised data that goes through a couple score billion if-statements with something analogous to a bunch of single-instruction-multiple-data 8-bit operations, resulting in an output of a bunch of tokenised data. And even that is done in a loop."

Yes, but— it is immune from laws. And that makes it more powerful than a conventional computer program, in fact arguably more powerful than a human

@jskists