The otherwise admirable Richard Dawkins should adjust the local settings of the chatbot or tell it to be less obsequious (Richard Dawkins concludes AI is conscious, even if it doesn’t know it, 6 May). Such bots are initially geared to American overenthusiasm and egregiously flattering reinforcement, but just tell them you want British attitude. They’re only simulating you know.
Brian Reffin Smith
Berlin, Germany
With artificial intelligence bringing “large language models” into everyday use, the LLM after my name has acquired a new meaning. For 70 years I assumed that it referred to my Cambridge master of laws.
Trevor Lyttleton
London
While AI chatbots do not have DNA, as long as flattery is hard-wired into the battery, there’s every chance of winning friends and influencing people.
Austen Lynch
Garstang, Lancashire
To its credit, my girls’ secondary school in the 1950s did try to give us first years a bit of variety in PE lessons (Letters, 3 May). We had country dancing each week. Unfortunately, when rebuked for my wrong steps, I protested to the teacher that I was being original. She gave me a detention.
Maggie Jones
Blackheath, London
Thank you, Michael Heylings, for sharing how the use of coloured chalk was your breakthrough in teaching mathematics (Letters, 4 May). My own breakthrough was the refreshing set of eight books, Graded Examples in Mathematics, written some 40 years ago by one MR Heylings.
Patrick Jordan
Nottingham
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