The Stochastic Parrot: A Fable
Chris Danta
Engraving of the Psittacus Parrot, the Laurey form the Brasils, from the book ‘A natural history of birds’ by Eleazar Albin, William Derham, Jonathan Dwight, and Marcia Brady, 1731. Courtesy Internet Archive.
Once upon a time, there lived a remarkable parrot with precognitive abilities. Everyone knows how parrots have a knack for imitating human speech. But this parrot went one step further into unravelling the mysteries of our language. It could not just repeat phrases that were spoken to it but also accurately predict the speaker’s next word. When someone stood in front of the parrot’s cage and started speaking to it, no matter how strange or contrived the sentence, the caged bird would complete the sentence precisely as the person had formulated it in their head. Of course, there were times when the parrot did not choose quite the right words. But it was right so often that everyone in the village where it lived was truly astonished at its behaviour and became convinced it could read the minds of other creatures. The stochastic parrot, as it was called, became famous throughout the kingdom.
As you can guess, it was not long before the king requested for the stochastic parrot to be brought before him at the court and he too marvelled at the bird’s ability to predict the next words of every speaker. Indeed, the king was so taken by the parrot’s precognitive ability that, as was his right, he confiscated it from its owners. Taking the caged creature into his private chambers, he would spend hours testing the accuracy of its predictions. The king (who liked to think of himself as something of a poet) desperately wanted to invent a sentence that the parrot could not possibly predict. I am the king, he thought to himself, surely this bird cannot predict my every word. When, time and again, the stochastic parrot accurately finished the king’s sentences, the king grew sad. If this lowly creature can predict my every next word, he thought, I feel less special, less kingly. The king eventually became so depressed at hearing his next words spoken back to him that he withdrew from human society and the responsibilities of his office. It’s not hard to see how this story ends: when the kingdom fell into disarray because of the king’s distractedness, one of its rivals, noticing the weakness of its opponent, immediately invaded.
Moral: Everything in the universe is computational.