Reading LLMs Through Foucault: Humans Are Stochastic Parrots Too
Merzmensch · x · 2026-10-12
Discussing an article on Foucault and AI, the author argues Foucault would agree LLMs are "stochastic parrots" — but add that humans are too, since our "authenticity" is itself a construction. Foucault's critique of the genius topos also feels urgent in current AI discourse.
The author also flags a misleading claim in the article: model training doesn't embed specific values or ideologies; value injection happens when a model is deployed inside a harness like ChatGPT or Claude. The raw GPT model and its harnessed form are fundamentally different things.
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