One word, three meanings: how "neuralese" split into Neuralese, Shortspeak and Claudish
gleech · x · 2026-09-06
gleech observes that the term "neuralese" has splintered into three distinct meanings worth keeping straight:
- NEURALESE: the inscrutable, continuous, untokenized thousand-dimensional representations used by fully recurrent models — unreadable by definition.
- SHORTSPEAK: "deep-fried" chain-of-thought output, a highly compressed form of English.
- CLAUDISH / DELVISH: the dry idiolect of assistant-style LLMs — over-expanded rather than compressed, full of parallelism, sentimentality and false balance, which he dubs "Corporate Memphis English."
The third meaning maps onto a Guardian piece about ChatGPT's signature "It's not X, it's Y" construction, now so ubiquitous across social feeds, fitness classes and TV that once noticed it becomes impossible to unsee.
Related event: 'Neuralese' Now Means Three Different Things in AI Circles(2 posts)→
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