Renaissance Humanism and LLMs: A Cross-Temporal Dialogue
This article explores the similarities and differences between Renaissance humanist education and modern large language models (LLMs). By analyzing examples from Erasmus's *Ciceronianus* and Rabelais's *Gargantua and Pantagruel*, the article points out that humanists trained their writing skills by imitating classical authors, similar to how LLMs generate text by training on corpora. However, humanist writing training can also lead to a generalized form of expression lacking specificity and communicative power for particular situations, much like LLMs sometimes produce seemingly plausible but factually unfounded 'hallucinations'. The article ultimately emphasizes the importance of listening and responding in interpersonal communication and cautions against the instrumentalization of language generation tools. Focusing on the social and interactive nature of language is key to effective communication.