AP Stylebook warns against anthropomorphizing AI systems:
“Avoid language that gives them human characteristics… Instead, explain what a system does, how well it performs, who built it and who could be affected by it.”
@leahmcelrath.bsky.social “gives [it] human characteristics”
@unfmeghan @leahmcelrath.bsky.social native English speaker here 👋🏻
"Them" refers to "systems." If you corrected to "it," this would be like writing "when describing systems, avoid anthropomorphizing it." This construction would be ungrammatical because the plurality of "systems" and "it" disagree.
Sep 24, 2026, 8:18 AM@ryanprior @unfmeghan @leahmcelrath.bsky.social OK, but I would rephrase nonetheless. It would have been easy to write "language that attributes human characteristics to these systems". Also the word "give", though not strictly reserved to human receivers, is chosen really poorly in this context as the word combination "give them" strongly suggests humans are involved on the receiving end.
Sep 24, 2026, 12:27 PM@DePemig @ryanprior @unfmeghan @leahmcelrath.bsky.social I agree it could be rephrased, but also I might say, “give them a rinse” when talking about my dishes or clothes, which I’m definitely not anthropomorphizing.
Would also like more reporting on the billionaires funding the AI bubble.
Except for Nvidia's creative accounting, that copies Enron's circular finance fraud, everyone else is losing money.
The fossil fuel industry adores laundering its money in stock market pump & dumps, but there is also a political agenda for this loss leader...
...thwarting the switch to cheaper renewable energy
https://www.wired.com/story/us-data-centers-drive-gas-power-expansion/
@leahmcelrath.bsky.social amen. Finally some straight talk
@leahmcelrath.bsky.social Yet another reason to support AP News. Fighting the good fight on many fronts.
@leahmcelrath.bsky.social I'm not so sure about that animal part in it. Humans are animals after all (even if that's hard to accept for some)
@feyter @leahmcelrath.bsky.social
Humans are animals but not all animals are humans. Speaking as if they are human is anthropomorphism.
@gdinwiddie @leahmcelrath.bsky.social Anthropomorphism is a nonsense word. In the example "thinking, feeling and wanting" are named. All that could easy be applied to all animals not humans alone.
If we want to define what a human is, the best thing we have is cladistics. Defining it by unique trails that only humans have and no other "thing" has is a dead end, because everything is blurred.
@feyter @leahmcelrath.bsky.social
All words are nonsense words when you don't know what they mean.
@gdinwiddie @leahmcelrath.bsky.social Maybe 😀 But some sound senical at first but start becoming meaningless once you think deeper about the nature of thing.
Anthropomorphismus for example has no real sensical meanings, because there are no human only traits.
Cat or Dogs don't think like humans but they think. Two humans also don't think exactly the same. So what should Anthropomorphismus actually mean? Defining an area within a blurred surface is subjective.
@feyter Anthropomorphism is not connected with categorizing or defining species.
@gdinwiddie Ok
Don't anthropomorphize computers! They don't like that.
