CONCEPT
The Decontextualization Machine
The structural characterization of large language models in Lave's framework — systems whose specific contribution to cognition is the extraction of patterns from context, producing outputs that are plausible across contexts without being situated in any particular one.
The decontextualization machine is On AI's name for what large language models do at the level of their fundamental operation. The training process extracts statistical patterns from trillions of tokens of human-produced text. Every text in the training corpus was produced in a specific context — by a specific person, for a specific audience, in response to a specific situation, drawing on specific knowledge that the producer selected because of specific contextual factors. The model retains none of this context. It retains the text — the propositional residue of the situated practice that produced it. The patterns the model extracts capture what was said without preserving why it was said, by whom, in response to what specific situation. Decontextualization is not a failure of the technology. It is the technology's design.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The phrase names what Lave's framework identifies as the central epistemic operation of contemporary