Words matter. Damnit.

On this week’s Intelligent Machines, we cohosts had a spirited disagreement about Anthropic’s watermarking of text, as required by EU regulation. The company just released more detail about how it will work, and now I’m upset for a different reason than I first thought. I’m angry as a writer. Anthropic’s method will alter its models’ word choices in a pattern based on a key only it knows, allowing it to detect writing (or editing or translation) by its machine — to an uncertain degree of certainty. The company contends there is no difference in meaning between the otherwise random choices “grey” or “overcast” in, for example, the context of weather. So what’s the issue? Thus Anthropic declares words fungible, language random, choice meaningless. Not to me. I try to select my words as carefully as I can for a number of considerations: style, tone, rhythm, avoiding repetition, but most of all meaning. You may quibble with my choices, but they are mine, not yours; that’s what makes my…