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The actual scientific article is open-access: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07856-5
This seems to be based on a racist assumption. Why is speaking improper English labelled as “African American english”?. I would want to see the LLM assumptions also for southern drawl and for general incorrectly spelled / grammared speech, to compare to the assumptions made for the African American english version.
Speaking with slang / incorrect grammar is of course, in general, inversely correlated with education level and/or preference for shorthand forms of speech over writing/speaking the full grammatically correct form. The LLM is saying speaking in slang = stupid/lazy.
The researcher is labelling slang as specifically African American speak, therefore interpreting the LLM response as assuming African Americans are stupid/lazy.
This [the article?] seems to be based on a racist assumption.
No, it isn’t based on an assumption. The written features that were analysed are associated with AAE. From the article:
- use of invariant ‘be’ for habitual aspect;
- use of ‘finna’ as a marker of the immediate future;
- use of (unstressed) ‘been’ for SAE [standard American English] ‘has been’ or ‘have been’ (present perfects);
- absence of the copula ‘is’ and ‘are’ for present-tense verbs;
- use of ‘ain’t’ as a general preverbal negator;
- orthographic realization of word-final ‘ing’ as ‘in’;
- use of invariant ‘stay’ for intensified habitual aspect; and
- absence of inflection in the third-person singular present tense.
Why is speaking improper English labelled as “African American english”?.
Flip the question - why are those features associated with AAE labelled “improper English”?
I would want to see the LLM assumptions also for southern drawl and for general incorrectly spelled / grammared speech
The article tackles this: “Furthermore, we present experiments involving texts in other dialects (such as Appalachian English) as well as noisy texts, showing that these stereotypes cannot be adequately explained as either a general dismissive attitude towards text written in a dialect or as a general dismissive attitude towards deviations from SAE”
Really good reply, thanks for the effort you put in. Its good to see they did compare with other dialects. It’s interesting that the same bias was not seen.
I would still disagree with the statement that AAE could be considered equally proper to textbook, grammatically correct according to the Oxford English dictionary (or the American equivalent). A dialect by definition is an adaptation of the language from the standard ‘proper’ grammatical rules.
Sorry beforehand for the wall of text.
I would still disagree with the statement that AAE could be considered equally proper to textbook, grammatically correct according to the Oxford English dictionary (or the American equivalent).
The reason why AAE is considered less acceptable than SAE (Standard American English) is not “within” the AAE varieties. It’s solely social factors - people point to “he is working” and say “this is right”, then they point at “he working” and say “this is wrong”.
Dictionaries are only part of that. We (people in general) assign authoritativeness to them to dictate what’s the standard is supposed to be, but that authority is not intrinsic either. For example if people mass decided to ditch the Oxford English dictionary, suddenly it stops being a reference to what’s “correct” vs. “wrong” English.
A dialect by definition is an adaptation of the language from the standard ‘proper’ grammatical rules.
Emphasis mine. That’s incorrect.
There are multiple definitions of dialect. Plenty focus on mutual intelligibility - if speakers of two varieties can communicate just fine, their varieties are a dialect of the same language, independently of what you consider standard.
The nearest of what you’re saying would be the ones referring to the standard as an asbau variety, with the dialects being the varieties “roofed” by that standard, but not undergoing the same process by themselves.
However, not even in the later the dialect needs to be “an adaptation” of the standard. Sometimes both originated independently from the same source, like French (standard) and Norman (dialect), both from Late Latin; sometimes the standard itself is an “adaptation” of a dialect, like Standard Italian (basically a spin-off of the Tuscan dialect). And sometimes the standard was formed from multiple dialects, like Standard German did.
Focusing on AAE, it’s disputed where it comes from, but it’s certainly not from SAE. Some claim that it’s a divergent form of Dixie English, some claim that it’s a decreolised creole, but in neither case the origin is SAE, they simply developed side-to-side.
I always love when cough “educated” people (usually just what they like to say when they mean “not black”) go on about how “black people don’t speak proper English!” because certain vowels can be dropped here or there, grammar shifts, the works. Most of us have heard AAE (also maybe heard it called “Ebonics” if you’re a little older) at one point or another, and likely don’t have an issue understanding what anyone is saying. A few things that skew more metaphorical or slang words might slip by but you get the gist.
That’s the point of language. Convey information. If the information is conveyed, then language has done its job. Yay language.
If anyone wants to continue saying “it’s not PROPER English” well… I have bad news for you. Neither is any other modern form of English. So many words have been borrowed, or stolen, sentence structures have changed, entire words change meaning. And that’s just in the last 100 years.
English is an amalgamation of many different root languages, and has so many borrowed words and phrases, along with nearly every other modern language, can any of them still be said to be “proper”?
When I think of the difference between “proper English” and “improper English” I’m reminded of My Fair Lady. “The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain” Eliza vs Henry Higgins (or 'enry 'iggins if you’re feeling improper)
“educated” people (usually just what they like to say when they mean “not black”)
Please don’t be racist. Education level is unconnected to race.
Please don’t call other people racist, unless slander is your thing.
The whole point of that was to hilight how racist people like to call someone “educated” when what they really mean is “wow you sound white”
It was mocking the exact kind of person you seem to believe I am.
Although nonstandard English and pidgins often demonstrate the same level of nuance and complexity as standard English, it’s very common for there to be negative stereotypes. One has to wonder whether the LLMs generated from (stolen en masse) written output say as much about us as they do about their creators.
Pretty much, it was trained on human writing, then people are all surprised when it has human biases.
An LLM needs to evaluate and modify the preliminary output before actually sending it. In the context of a human mind that’s called thinking before opening your mouth.
Who among us couldn’t benefit from a little more of that?
Humans aren’t always very good at that, and LLMs were trained on stuff written by humans, so here we are.
Exciting new product from the tech industry: Fruit from the poisoned tree!
