A very noisy channel

Language Log 2024-04-13

From Breffni O'Rourke:

I thought you might appreciate this effort by Dall.E. The prompt was "Create a diagram of Shannon and Weaver's model of communication."

That image is a totally incoherent representation of the "noisy channel model", pictured in a more helpful way in Claude Shannon's 1948 monograph A Mathematical Theory of Communication:

And a version with some added color can be found in the Wikipedia article on "The Shannon-Weaver Model".

Breffni's comment:

Among other things, it's interesting to see what it's done with the text, which I guess it's treating as a purely visual element, maybe analogously to 'decorative English'.

I'm not sure — my guess was that Dall.E found a lot of web text related to the model, and some relevant images, but totally and completely failed to understand the basic ideas. Then again, maybe it's better viewed as a somewhat creative hallucination.

Of course humans can also get things wrong. The Wikipedia "Noisy Channel Model" article weirdly fails to mention Shannon or his 1948 monograph, which is kind of like an Easter article referencing egg hunts, peeps, and chocolate bunnies, while omitting Jesus and the bible.