We need to communicate. So language evolves new words to deal with the new concepts that we talk about. That’s why the Cambridge Dictionary added new definitions for the terms “hallucinate” and “slop”. Only farmers still know that the traditional definition of slop is “liquid or wet food waste”.
A brief guide to AI personality types
This week I read the term “AI bloomers”. I had no idea what that meant, so I did a bit of research. It seems to come from the book “Superagency: What Could Possibly Go Right with Our AI Future”. (I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know what could go right.)
Reid Hoffman, co-author of the book, came up with terms for different attitudes towards AI:
- AI doomers believe AI is an existential threat that may doom the human race.
- AI gloomers are skeptical about AI. They want stringent controls, but don’t reject AI outright.
- AI zoomers want AI to happen as fast as possible everywhere. They don’t worry about risks or ethics.
- AI bloomers believe that if AI is properly and intelligently managed, it can be a positive force for humanity.
Hoffman missed out on a rhyming opportunity. What about AI boomers? They could be the people who over-hype AI. Or they could be AI BOOMers! The people who want to blow up data centers and Sam Altman.
Tongue twisters for the technically troubled
That led me to come up with spenders and lenders. It’s not difficult to expand on this:
- AI spenders spend money, sometimes recklessly, on all things AI.
- AI lenders provide the money to the AI spenders. These are the investors who hope to make a fortune. And sometimes they are people like you and me, who unwillingly provide the money when our own incomes are cut.
- AI enders end things that already exist, like jobs and tools and workflows.
- AI benders warp rules and ethics and meaning. They generate deep-fakes and AI spam.
- AI renders want to destory everything AI. I got that idea from a fantasy novel that uses the term “render” for a beserker.
Or we could label people like this:
- AI destroyers break workflows, norms, or industries.
- AI deployers unleash AI recklessly.
- AI annoyers spam AI content everywhere.
- AI employers replace staff with AI.
There are so many options.
Speech therapy makes use of tongue twisters to improve pronunciation. You may remember phrases like:
“She sells sea shells along a sea shore“
and
“Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers“
Soon we can have new tongue twisters with AI slashers and smashers and crashers and bashers. Or breakers and fakers and takers and shakers.
A new list of side effects
There are some genuine terms that have become established, like AI fatigue.
What else can happen if you use too much AI? You could experience:
- AI rash: that outbreak you get when management has yet another idea for a way to use AI.
- AI whiplash: what you get from all that rapid context switching. (Context switching is a real thing, by the way.)
- AI thrash: when you go slightly crazy after trying too many tasks at once.
- AI crash: when you give up and fall asleep at your desk.
-
AI bash: what you do to your head when you find another bug in the AI-generated code. It can also refer to what you want to do to the person who didn’t check the AI output for correctness. Or what you want to do to AI when it spews garbage again. This could be a very useful term.
And when you really can’t go on anymore, you have AI brainsmash.
Share your rhymes with me, and we can start a new AI dictionary.