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Artificial Speech and Its Authors

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Abstract

Some of the systems used in natural language generation (NLG), a branch of applied computational linguistics, have the capacity to create or assemble somewhat original messages adapted to new contexts. In this paper, taking Bernard Williams’ account of assertion by machines as a starting point, I argue that NLG systems meet the criteria for being speech actants to a substantial degree. They are capable of authoring original messages, and can even simulate illocutionary force and speaker meaning. Background intelligence embedded in their datasets enhances these speech capacities. Although there is an open question about who is ultimately responsible for their speech, if anybody, we can settle this question by using the notion of proxy speech, in which responsibility for artificial speech acts is assigned legally or conventionally to an entity separate from the speech actant.

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Notes

  1. The term “actant” is due to Latour (1999), who uses it to explain phenomena in terms not reducible to individuals, social groups, institutions or artefacts on their own. My usage is much more limited and is not intended to rule out such a reduction.

  2. This passage was brought to my attention by Salinga and Wuttig (2011).

  3. This is not to say that hypotheses are not truth-evaluable, only that their implicit purpose is not always undermined if they turn out to be false. Some hypotheses (such as those putting forward a claim to be investigated) need only be plausible in order to be satisfactory. Others, such as those used in proving a reductio ad absurdum, need not even be plausible in order to be satisfactory.

  4. Insincere assertions, which show a kind of attunement to the world without attempting to represent it accurately, would be an exception.

  5. However, there is an effort to use landmarks as points of orientation, as mentioned above (Klippel and Winter 2005). In addition, humor has been attempted in NLG using narrowly defined forms such as punning (Strapparava et al. 2011).

  6. Not all of the criteria are susceptible of satisfaction to a degree, but the criterion of originality of content is. There is no obvious threshold of originality beyond which we ascribe unambiguous authorship to a given entity. For example, in the adaptation of a story one has heard earlier for a new purpose or audience, there is no obvious point at which one becomes a co-author or sole author.

  7. For the moment we shall set aside doubts about whether the notion of agency can apply to artificial legal persons such as corporations.

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  1. Department of Philosophy and Ethics, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Philip J. Nickel

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Nickel, P.J. Artificial Speech and Its Authors. Minds & Machines 23, 489–502 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-013-9303-9

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