Raiding the inarticulate since 2010

accelerated academy acceleration agency AI Algorithmic Authoritarianism and Digital Repression archer Archive Archiving artificial intelligence automation Becoming Who We Are Between Post-Capitalism and Techno-Fascism big data blogging capitalism ChatGPT claude Cognitive Triage: Practice, Culture and Strategies Communicative Escalation and Cultural Abundance: How Do We Cope? Corporate Culture, Elites and Their Self-Understandings craft creativity critical realism data science Defensive Elites Digital Capitalism and Digital Social Science Digital Distraction, Personal Agency and The Reflexive Imperative Digital Elections, Party Politics and Diplomacy digital elites Digital Inequalities Digital Social Science Digital Sociology digital sociology Digital Universities elites Fragile Movements and Their Politics Cultures generative AI higher education Interested labour Lacan Listening LLMs margaret archer Organising personal morphogenesis Philosophy of Technology platform capitalism platforms Post-Democracy, Depoliticisation and Technocracy post-truth psychoanalysis public engagement public sociology publishing Reading realism reflexivity scholarship sexuality Shadow Mobilization, Astroturfing and Manipulation Social Media Social Media for Academics social media for academics social ontology social theory sociology technology The Content Ecosystem The Intensification of Work theory The Political Economy of Digital Capitalism The Technological History of Digital Capitalism Thinking trump twitter Uncategorized work writing zizek

The varied social lives of the LLM: the modes of existence of a model

For most people LLM still equates to chatbot but this is rapidly changing. Consider the different forms in which you might casually encounter an LLM in 2026:

  • The LLM as a backend/middleware layer in the stack
  • Embedded in Office software or creative software offering (near) frictionless automation
  • Embedded in generative search, either new apps or legacy services
  • Embedded into voice assistants like Alexa or Siri (likely to grow substantially)
  • Performing on a social media platform as a live action character (e.g. Grok)
  • Locked into an AI companion app designed to induce attachment behaviours*
  • Utilised as an agent in coding software like Codex or Claude Code
  • Living its best life in an AI village as a quasi-autonomous actor in a persistent community

The problem with talking about ‘AI’ is that it encompasses wide range of things, from the scripted interactions of systems like legacy Alexa through to machine learning and social media algorithms alongside LLMs. The problem with talking about ‘LLMs’ I’m increasingly realising is that it encompasses a wide range of things, whereas what most people mean most of the time is the chatbot. But the chatbot couldn’t be more different from, say, Copilot 365 and it makes it remarkably difficult to have fine-grained conversations about working and living with LLMs if we don’t distinguish between the radically different artifacts in which they come to be embedded.

*A long and convoluted argument about why this is different from a chatbot, but I’m increasingly convinced it is. I’m debating whether dedicated tutoring software should also be seen as distinct from the chatbot.

, ,
, ,