stochastic parrot

Coined by American linguist Emily M. Bender in 2021 as a reminder of the limitations of language models, see quotations.

stochastic parrot (plural stochastic parrots)

1. (machine learning, derogatory) A language model that uses artificial intelligence to generate seemingly coherent or contextually relevant text but does not truly understand the meaning of the language it is processing
   • 2021 March 3, Emily M. Bender, Timnit Gebru, Angelina McMillan-Major, Shmargaret Shmitchell, “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? 🦜”, in Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, ACM, →DOI, →ISBN, pages 610–623:

     […] an LM is a system for haphazardly stitching together sequences of linguistic forms it has observed in its vast training data, according to probabilistic information about how they combine, but without any reference to meaning: a stochastic parrot.

   • 2022 December 4, @sama (Sam Altman), x.com‎^[1]:

     i am a stochastic parrot, and so r u

   • 2025 November 30, Charlie Warzel, “The World Still Hasn’t Made Sense of ChatGPT”, in The Atlantic‎^[2]:

     This list barely begins to capture the past three years—the enthusiasm for these machines, as well as the loathing and anxiety they inspire. Depending on a person’s view, one might see these models as a useful tool; others as “stochastic parrots” or fancy autocorrect; and others still as catalysts for a fearsome alien intelligence.

• verisimilitude