OpenAI's Pharmacy? On the Phaedrus Analogy for Large Language Models

Plato's dialogue Phaedrus is often used as a cautionary tale about the futility of distrusting new communicative technologies. But in the context of LLMs (large language models), the Phaedrus analogy is substantially misplaced. LLMs exclude the free play of language, producing texts not only without writers, but also without writing (in Jacques Derrida's sense). The Phaedrus analogy thus risks justifying the swift adoption of a commercial tool that is poorly understood, demonstrably flawed, and reliant on laborious human interventions.