Incorporating Machine-Others: An Enactive Exploration of Human-LLM Interactions

Elena C. Cuffari, Marta Pérez-Verdugo, Xabier E. Barandiaran

New concepts based in interactional thinking are required to understand how humans are changed by relating to LLMs. Standard theories of technological impact upon users' autonomy are inadequate here, because this technology is capable of inducing linguistic interactions with humans in an unprecedented manner. Traditional theories of social cognition also fall short, because LLMs have neither autonomy nor minds nor sociality as such. And yet, humans interact, talk, and create with them. We base ourselves on enactive theory, particularly on the theory of Linguistic Bodies and recent developments of enactive accounts of AI, to explore how we make sense with machines. We argue that we incorporate machine-others in two ways: in the tool-like sense of incorporation as enabling particular skills, but also in the more linguistic and identity-tied sense of incorporating (and incarnating) LLMs' ways of languaging. However, LLMs are themselves excorporated and excarnated phantoms of our own languaging; we give a (machinic) body to our language. As such, we are not just incorporating machinic others; we are incorporating excorporated others. These conceptual advances draw a new map of our…