As meaning-makers, we use spoken or signed language to understand our experiences in the world around us. The emergence of generative artificial intelligence such as ChatGPT (using large language models) call into question the very notion of how to define “meaning.”
One popular characterization of AI tools is that they “understand” what they are doing. Nobel laureate and AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton said: “What’s really surprised me is how good neural networks are at understanding natural language — that happened much faster than I thought…. And I’m still amazed that they really do understand what they’re saying.”
