I’ve had a similar thought about language, and the evolution or lack thereof with LLMs.

With the printing press+internet, one might argue that we’ve helped cement current languages, making it harder for language to evolve naturally.

(A counterpoint may be slang/memes/etc. which has likely increased the velocity of new words for any given language.)

In either case, one might see LLMs as further cementing language, as it’s the thing the machines understand (until their next training run).

Assuming we struggle to make LLMs that learn in realtime, one might suspect that these amazing new tools might further cement the status quo, meaning less new words than before.

With all that said, I think I’ve come to the conclusion that LLMs will likely speed up the evolution of language.

The hypothesis being, that future generations will develop communication that the robots can’t read, at least at first.

A never-ending game of cat and mouse; while the cat is on v6, the mouse is on v7. Ad infinitum.