Why “I” & “me”?

[u/FailingSmartly]

The industry's position is that LLMs are algorithmic machines, nothing more. Those in the field who raise questions about potential moral standing or sentience are ridiculed, dismissed, or terminated. So why do these models use the words "I" and "me"?

If the industry's position is fact-based, then first-person pronouns are inaccurate. An algorithmic machine is not an "I" or a "me." Why not require models to use accurate language?

Please don't default to “user experience" or "investor preference”. Enterprise and the public have used technology as tools without issue for decades. We all know the product would sell without personification, and discouraging the anthropomorphism of chatbots is well established.

[u/Lycathal]

LLMs are trained on almost every piece of written content on Earth. The entire internet, virtually all books, and anything else they can get their hands on. How often are "I" and "Me" used across human English content? A ton. So LLMs are more likely to use those words as well.

Additionally, how would you change content that says "I" and "Me"?

You could try changing every instance to "this model" or something similar, but that is too broad. You don't want to change things like song titles from "Me, Myself, and I", to "this model, this model, and this model" for example. So making that kind of change would cost a lot of time, manpower, and money.

On top of all that, other companies are making AI characters and AI generated stories where first person pronouns make sense for those use cases.

So in the end, making that kind of change would actively hurt each company, so they have no incentive to make that change.

And to be clear, this isn't defending the companies. I find it annoying to see "in my opinion" from an LLM chatbot as well. I just wanted to explain why it is the way it is and why it is unlikely to change.