Devon Erthshade
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Devon Erthshade
@erthshade.bsky.social
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Reposted by Devon Erthshade
carlbergstrom.com
3. This is not the first time around; journalists should not still be making this mistake. We went through this before last summer when headlines claimed that Grok "apologized" for its whole Hilter thing.

In the words of Joey Swole: Do better.

/fin
So can an LLM apologize? For a speech act to be meaningful, the speaker must be sincere and must be the type of agent that is capable of performing such an act. If one third grader on the playground taps another on the shoulder with a stick and says "I dub thee Sir Fartalot", no actual title has been bequeathed. The act was neither sincere, nor performed by one authorized to confer knighthood. In our view, LLMs are incapable of being sincere in issuing an apology. They don't have feelings of remorse, nor volition to do better in the future. Because they are not intentional agents, we would also argue that they are not the kinds of actors that can genuinely apologize. (Nevertheless, they do frequently apologize when called on their mistakes—and then repeat them after promising to do better.) If an LLM can't apologize itself, can it apologize on our behalf? Might I enlist the help of an LLM to draft text for my own apology? Perhaps—but in passing off the machine's words as my own, I undermine the sincerity and authenticity of my apology.
January 3, 2026 at 12:22 AM