How to talk about
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Emily M. Bender and Nanna Inie In our op-ed for Tech Policy Press ("We Need to Talk About How We Talk About 'AI'"), we made the case against the...

In our op-ed for Tech Policy Press (“We Need to Talk About How We Talk About ‘AI’”), we made the case against the anthropomorphizing language that makes it harder to have clear discussions of what so-called “AI” technologies actually do, and when and whether to use them. But these ways of speaking are deeply ingrained at this point, and it takes work carve new conversational and writing habits. That work involves at least three steps:

  • Noticing which word choices are anthropomorphizing
  • Finding alternatives
  • Getting in the habit of using the alternatives
  • KexPilot
    1·
    1 day ago

    Well, I see two categories of langague that are being taken under a single umbrella here:

    • Natural every-day language, to which my point still stands. “Lying” definitely falls into this category. I can only repeat here the above, we simply talk like this. You cannot expect human language to be 100% formal precise all the time in this sense.
    • More formal definitions. Yes, here I agree a bit that these should be as precise as possible. But when it comes to definitions, I also don’t think this is something that affects our ability to talk about it. When a paper or a dictionary defines what a term means, that’s the meaning we imply by using the term. Not the parts the term is made up from. There are plenty of latine names for animals and plants that we use, even though the individual parts of the name are not actually true about that animal and come from misdocumentation or a misconception. Nazis are not socialist, despite their name conatining the word. What I do agree with is that the imprecise naming might cause confusion when being new to the term, but once the talking and thinking starts, you would already be at a point where you know what the term means.