Artificial intelligence language models and the false fantasy of participatory language policies
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Artificial intelligence neural language models learn from a corpus of online language data, often drawn directly from user-generated content through crowdsourcing or the gift economy, bypassing traditional keepers of language policy and planning (such as governments and institutions). Here lies the dream that the languages of the digital world can bend towards individual needs and wants, and not the traditional way around. Through the participatory language work of users, linguistic diversity, accessibility, personalization, and inclusion can be increased. However, the promise of a more participatory, just, and emancipatory language policy as a result of neural language models is a false fantasy. I argue that neural language models represent a covert and oppressive form of language policy that benefits the privileged and harms the marginalized. Here, I examine the ideology underpinning neural language models and investigate the harms that result from these emerging subversive regulatory bodies.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.020 | 0.046 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.042 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.009 | 0.017 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.010 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".