Culture | Johnson

ChatGPT raises questions about how humans acquire language

It has reignited a debate over the ideas of Noam Chomsky, the world’s most famous linguist

Illustration: Nick Lowndes

WHEN DEEP BLUE, a chess computer, defeated Garry Kasparov, a world champion, in 1997 many gasped in fear of machines triumphing over mankind. In the intervening years, artificial intelligence has done some astonishing things, but none has managed to capture the public imagination in quite the same way. Now, though, the astonishment of the Deep Blue moment is back, because computers are employing something that humans consider their defining ability: language.

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This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “The language instinct”

From the April 29th 2023 edition

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