Large Language Model AI: Why Words Matter

There’s an old joke where a man, stuck on a desert island, finds a bottle washed up on shore. 

It looks like the classic genie’s bottle – it’s got a cool shape, it’s decorated, it’s got a fancy stopper sealing it shut. The man opens the bottle and, sure enough, there’s a cloud of smoke, and then a genie appears. “I’ll grant you three wishes,” says the genie. 

Now the man’s been on this island for weeks. He’s thirsty. He’s lived off of rainwater and unripe fruits, which have wrecked his stomach. He’s weak and thinks, “Clearly, I’m hallucinating.” 

But the genie is still there, waiting, so the man finally says, “Make me a ham sandwich.” And, sure enough, the genie smiles, waves his hands and turns the man into a ham sandwich. He’s bread and meat, maybe some mayo. 

A crow circles and soon the end is near, and the man, now a sentient ham sandwich, wonders what the hell just happened.

Well, that's the joke anyway. From our perspective, it's very clear what happened – the man asked to be turned into a ham sandwich. 

Of course, he meant that he wanted the genie to prepare for him a ham sandwich, so he could eat that ham sandwich, but that's not exactly what he said, now, is it? Language is, sometimes, important. Just asking a short-order cook to make you a ham sandwich might work well, but asking that of a genie, or a large language model AI, might not work so well. 

Coding computer programming used to be a lot like that. People would enter in code, and, as they say, garbage in, garbage out. The code would have to be perfect, or the program would be buggy. 

And, to be clear, a lot of coding still works exactly that way. The majority of coding is done like how we generally think of it – entering lines of code that are indecipherable to us average humans but are electronic poetry to coders. But coding, at least some of it, is changing. 

Most people familiar with programs like ChatGPT know that you can simply ask ChatGPT to write you code for a website. This may be a limited feature currently, but it's certainly getting more advanced, and it's likely that, relatively soon, standard English will be a prevalent coding language. 

And this brings us back to our genie. Being proficient at written language, when coding, is becoming an increasingly important skill. For years we’ve prioritized STEM over things like language arts.

But it’s likely that, alongside standard coding, there’s going to be a) a significant need for coders proficient in the language arts, b) an increased need for prompt engineers proficient in language skills, and c) a need for proficiency in language skill simply to be able to effectively use large language model AI. 

So, there’s certainly a need to pay attention in math class or science class, but English class may have more practical STEM applications than many currently think.