How to talk about "AI" without adding to the anthropomorphization
15 points by chobeat
15 points by chobeat
Very good to use for documentation of systems and tasks
I enjoy the article and its argument, but some of the proposed alternatives aren't nearly as catchy as what they try to replace, like "hallucination → undesirable output." I certainly agree with locating agency with people! For those interested, Melanie Mitchell has two articles critical of the misleading metaphors and anthropomorphizing terminology that the industry has adopted:
https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.adt6140
https://aiguide.substack.com/p/misleading-metaphors-and-real-risks
I like "confabulation" over "hallucination" and I do use the term LLM over AI (as there's more to AI than just LLMs).
I don't know if avoiding using anthropomorphizing language is worth it. As a species, we're great at anthropomorphizing everything from roombas to computers to hulking lab equipment.
Besides, some terms here are fairly uncontroversial or even ancient in computing terms - "speech recognition" was coined in the 60s.
Since these technologies are used for stuff like committing genocides, mass displacement of workers, surveillance by authoritarian governments and other evil purposes, the stake of using such language is deflecting the attention from the perpetrators (tech oligarchs and governments) who want you to believe the machines are autonomous and unstoppable. It's definitely worth it.
That's the thing, I don't see that language as "deflecting the attention from the perpetrators", and rather just another case of us referring to non-sentient things as sentient.
non-technical people really believe AI hacks companies on their own or find cancer cures by crunching numbers endlessly. This language is not for technical people who treat AI as matrix multiplications, it's for your grandma that knows about AI because Trump goes on TV saying it should be renamed "super intelligence".