Which Is to Be Master? Language, Authority and LLMs

Introduction “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that's all.” — Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass Humpty Dumpty believes that words can mean whatever we choose them to mean. Alice asks an interesting question. Can they? Programming and Language Programming languages derive much of their power from formally specified semantics. The language implementation, not the programmer, defines what if , while and return mean. I cannot persuade the compiler that false should be treated as true . The rules establish a shared and mechanically enforced understanding of what a program means. Large Language Models however, do not execute according to fixed semantics. They interpret natural language through context. This distinction has profound consequences and suggests that a language model has no intrinsic notion of authority. In a programming language, when two instructions conflict, the language specification and execution environment determine the outcome. In natural language, authority does not arise from the words alone. It depends on context, convention, identity, and external rules. Language models, by nature, inherit this ambiguity. A prompt is therefore not a program in the traditional sense. It is an attempt to establish the context within which subsequent language should be interpreted. "You are a detective." "Do not reveal the identity of the murderer." "Only answer questions using the evidence you have observed." None of these statements is mechanically enforced merely because it appears in the prompt. They describe a role, a constraint, and an assumed world. The model may follow them, but their authority must be created and protected by systems outside the model. Prompt injection exploits precisely this weakness. It