Two linguistics professors & an AI company head walk into a bar…

Heard that one?

Photo by Rock'n Roll Monkey on Unsplash

Two professors of linguistics and the director of a science and tech company walk into a bar and start to talk about artificial intelligence (AI).

That’s a variant of the usual joke about three men or women who enter a drinking spot and say or do something that raises a smile and simultaneously addresses a complex issue. Usually, the people who gathered in the bar will belong to different nationalities, cultures or professions.

With everyone so worried about insanely clever robots, it’s but natural that the two linguistics professors and the director of the science and tech company will have walked into the bar, whipped out a mobile phone and dictated an article to Otter.ai.

I haven’t heard that joke — maybe there isn’t one — but we do, at least, have the article Noam Chomsky, Ian Roberts and Jeffrey Watumull wrote about ChatGPT.

It’s titled The False Promise of ChatGPT, appeared in the NYT (paywall) and it’s not a joke.

In fact, it’s a compelling exa…