Ask Lemmy

I always preface it with Generative AI if I am going to use it

I work in the games industry and AI is already widely in use for NPC behaviour

I miss leetspeak personally

"GIF" as in giraffe, btw.

You forgot the biggest pronunciation hijack of the century.

Baud comes from Baudot code. The things I learned getting a HAM license.

Just say I'm getting old and can't cope next time

Ideally, AI is the larger umbrella term for just about anything. It should not be the term used when speaking critically of a specific kind of AI: NPC AI, TTS (text to speech), STT (speech to text), ML models for vision, GenAI (LLMs, image generators, audio generators, video generators) etc.

When speaking critically, most people do mean "GenAI" and that should be the distinction.

Well one thing we can do is tell the fuckwits who want computer games without AI to learn literally anything about the subject.

We could use terms like "predictive systems" or "expert systems" or "monster control systems", but they're all more specific. I say we keep using the term AI when talking about the field in general and when someone complains tell them to stop talking nonsense, and then keep using the correct term.

This reminds me of the same naming treatment that telephones got, once something else got called a phone

Well, the term hack has been around a lot longer than computers. Its past meaning is just no longer valid. I was watching the old tv show The Odd Couple, Felix's daughter said she just wanted to hack around, Felix had to ask what she meant. While she really couldnt explain, "you know dad, just, like, hack around", which in this sense seems to mean doing nothing in particular. Saying "I couldn't hack it" has a double meaning these days.

It might change with the next AI winter.

Also, the old "AI" was already a bit of a stretch from "artificial intelligence".

In the meantime, I'll probably refer to the old AI as "enemy controller", at least in the code.

I think you're referring to artificial general intelligence (AGI) and super intelligence (SI) or artificial super intelligence (ASI). Both were coined many years ago (~30) to differentiate from AI, which was already being used for much more than the original definition (which was meant to be AGI, or even ASI.)

For all three, GIF, hacker, AI, you just have to accept that language is fluid. Words are co-opted from other places all the time to describe new things. And to be honest, all of those terms have been used for meanings outside their original one for almost as long as they've existed, especially on the scale of human language.

I used to lament the term "drone" being used for remote control quadcopters... But the world won, so I have to stop being a nerd about it, and accept that it has a broader meaning now.

And just to note, people don't just mean genAI when they say AI now. They use AI for everything. You wrote a program to track workouts in a database? Better call it... "AI!"

to be fair hackers could be all kinds of electronics and tech and depending what they are doing could also be called crackers or phreakers or such.

Didn't baud = bps since we send 8bit "words" so for all of intents and purposes (except 40 year old gear) it's kind of correct?

Who uses baud nowadays though?!

How do we discuss anything when different people mean different things but use the same words? We all have weird perceptions of scale. Ask an american how far away 'far away' is. Then ask a European. Ask someone how they define 'smart.' Then ask someone who fits the first one's definition. You can get probably a dozen definitions each for words like 'friend,' 'trans,' 'fascist,' 'appropriate for children,' or just 'child.' Some people are dedicated to precision of language but society is full of people who say 'It was bluh,' because they either cannot, or just as often will not, put in the mental effort to find the words to express what they mean. Add in how most people don't have the time/bandwidth to learn what AI is, (or LLM, or genAI, or agentic, or neural networks, or conditionals, or statistical modeling, or anything else) but still want to feel like they do, so they map 'AI' onto some pre-existing concept in their head so they don't have to learn a new word.

Yes

I just act like Randal when someone says I "can't say that" or use "that word" anymore.