Mia Wallace (Image credit: Wikipedia)
In Quentin Tarantino’s blockbuster Pulp Fiction, Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman) asks Vincent Vega (John Travolta) whether he hates uncomfortable silences. Mia ponders ‘Why is it necessary to yak about bullshit to feel comfortable?’
Regarded as ‘one of the great arts of conversation’, silence is key to how we communicate. Linguist Deborah Tannen explains that silence is ambiguous. It may arise from what is assumed to be evidenced (and thus too obvious to even mention), or that which is supposed to be omitted.
Either way, humans are highly skilled at using silence in conversation through a process of socialisation refined as we move from the cradle to the grave.
When humans interact with generative Artificial Intelligence (generative AI) they tend to assume they are interacting with a fellow human, and they may even assume that these conversations are based on cooperation but they are missing a key piece of the interactional puzzle: the intentional use of silence.
To generate answers to our prompts, generative AI relies on mathematical probabilities. Large language models provide a plausible continuation of a likely next word based on vast amounts of data. Once the most probable next word is identified, the system moves on. Language models are a form of text processing. With silence, though, the text that should be processed is absent.
https://skepticalscience.com/graphics/SprialOfSilence-EN.jpg
When prompted to expand on how it approaches silence, ChatGPT-4 explains that minimal responses may be provided when a given input could lead to contentious or escalating conversations as a strategy to avoid conflict. That is, ChatGPT may sometimes provide a minimal response to ensure safety.
However, silence is not just a strategy to avoid conflict, it plays a key role in human interaction because what is left unsaid has meaning.
When silence points to great danger
In parts of Spain an algorithm called VioGén is used to determine whether a victim of domestic violence is in danger of being attacked again. The algorithm may get it wrong because victims may be embarrassed and not provide a response to direct questions such as ‘Has the aggressor demonstrated substance abuse?’ In such cases, the algorithm interprets the silence as the absence of a ‘yes’ response. In the absence of qualified humans to contextualise silent answers to the algorithm’s questions, the platform tends to miscalculate risk. This has led to multiple victim deaths which might have been avoided with appropriate human intervention.
Why does silence matter?
The expectation that human answers to direct queries will necessarily be lexicalised (manifested as words) does not align with how humans communicate. In conversation, silence is used strategically to express feelings or ideas which are best left unsaid.
One of the main reasons for the use of silence rests on what linguists call ‘face’ and ‘facework’ – ritual elements related to the fragility of our social interactions. When we speak, we spend a lot of our time saving our own and others’ ‘face’. In expressing a challenging opinion to a superior at work, for example, we may use the epistemic phrase ‘I think’ to preface our views to avoid threatening the other person’s right to a positive view of themselves.
Silence sits at the core of social relations across cultures. Each society tolerates a different length of silence in conversation. Mia Wallace’s complaint is her venting against mainstream American culture which tends to favour verbosity over silence. However, not all people in America embrace verbosity. For example, Scollon and colleagues argue that in Alaskan Athabaskan culture, the best interactions between two or more people involve long periods of silence.
Westerners’ need to fill air space with talk also aligns with a preference for direct questions to obtain information. Direct questioning, however, tends to be disfavoured by First Nations people in Australia. In the courtroom, yes/no questions are asked. Small differences in answer timing are sometimes magnified and misinterpreted as hostility by a system biased to stereotype minoritised populations, which may result in longer sentences for the accused.
Different orientations to silence also exist in the classroom, where Japanese students of English tend to miss out on opportunities to hold the floor because of their longer use of silence. Once the conversational floor is taken away, Japanese students find it hard to regain it. It’s not that Japanese students lack in fluency, it is just that expectations regarding the use of silence differ from those of mainstream Australia.
As society continues to embrace automation, algorithms, and AI, it is important to remain aware that not all people on earth behave like the mainstream English speakers who tend to design the technology. It’s also important to embrace language for what it is: a complex communicative system which includes way more than what may be expressed through words. When it comes to language, there is certainly more than meets the eye/ear/hand.
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