Stochastic Parrots

[Updated 2026-09-08]

In my "Semiotic Zombies" post of 2025-07-12, I was pointed at "Language Machines" subtitled "Cultural AI and the End of Remainder Humanism". I bought a copy of the eBook, & have finished reading the introduction. This book is heavy going, I think I may read it & review/summarize it a chapter at a time. Review/summary of the intro will be forthcoming.

Meanwhile, several new names for LLMs. I particularly liked "Stochastic Parrots", attributed to "AI ethicists Timnit Gebru and Emily Bender" in a 2021 paper "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? 🦜".

The intro to the book also completely validates the "semiotic" part of my "semiotic zombies" moniker. And the "success" of LLMs is indeed the revenge of French philosophers: Chapter 1 of the book is titled "How the Humanities Lost Language: Syntax, Statistics, and Structure". LOL, the revenge of the humanities professors!

I am discovering so many names for LLMs, maybe all these names will help us understand what these things really are & how they should be used. So I'm going to start a list here, which I will continue to update.

I will order these in the order in which they appeared in this blog.

#	Name	Author	Date
1	Bullshit Generators	me	2024-06-28
2	Bullshit Machines	Bergstrom & West	2025
3	The Poetry Machine	Seth Godin	2024-07-11
4	Language Machines	Leif Weatherby	2025
5	Cultural AI	Leif Weatherby	2025
6	Semiotic Zombies	me	2025-07-11
7	The Talking Dog	Seth Godin	2025-07-17
8	Semiotic Operators	Leif Weatherby	2025
9	Stochastic Parrots	Gebru & Bender	2021
10	Culture Machines	Leif Weatherby	2025
11	Ideology Machines	Leif Weatherby	2025
12	Acme Self-Writing Word Processor	me	2025-08-01
13	Autocomplete on Steroids	Gary Marcus	2021
14	Bullshit	Gary Marcus	2019
15	Deranged Zen Poets Spouting Bullshit	me	2025-07-14
16	Slot Machines	Cory Doctrow/ Deciphering Glyphs	2025-08-16
17	Superhuman Bullshit Generators	me	2025-11-09
18	Black-box Talking Dogs	me	2025-11-17
19	Clanker	William Tenn	1958
20	Autocomplete Robot	me	2026-03-12
21	Nonpragmatic Genies	me	2026-07-27
22	all-powerful psychopaths	Stuart J. Russell	2026-07-28
23	AutoTune for Writing	Doc Searls	2026-08-06
24	The Guitar Hero of Creativity	John Scalzi	2026-08-06
25	oft-mendacious talking horses	Amar Bhidé	2024-04-10
26	Acme Slop Generators	me	2026-09-08

Note, #2 above came from this post, which links to an impressive course titled "Modern Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines?" by Bergstrom & West, who are U of Washington professors. I just ordered their 2020 book "Calling Bullshit". These guys may be the bullshit experts we need!

I just came up with #12 this afternoon. I did a lot of work with early word processing & word processors - there were dedicated systems, Wang was big on that - in the late 70s, early 80s. DEC made 1, PDP-8 based, it had a custom keyboard with lots of different color keys for editing functions. There was a Canadian word-processing company who had a product Word-11, that came with decals that you put on the front of the keys of DEC VT-100 monitor keyboards. KMN!

LOL, I checked my Pocket Guides box in the basement. I have been trying to get someone to take these for years decades. Internet Archive is my next target.

I think this is another way of saying "Autocomplete on Steroids". Oops, that should be in the table. #13.

[Updated 2026-07-27]
"Nonpragmatic Genies" is more a name for "AI Agents" than LLMs. We may need a new, separate table for "AI Agent" names.

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