Last Words : Large Language Models and the AI Apocalypse

Kockelman, Paul

Prickly Paradigm Press, LLC（2024/09発売）

• 製本 Paperback:紙装版/ペーパーバック版／ページ数 60 p.
• 言語 ENG
• 商品コード 9781734643558
• DDC分類 006.35

Full Description

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.
 

Contents

1 The Edge
2 Human Semiosis
3 Machine Semiosis
4 Pre-Training and Fine-Tuning
5 Labor and Discipline
6 Parrot Power
7 Language without Mind or World
8 Meta-Semiosis and Monsters
9 The Problem with Alignment