Using de-anthropomorphized language

How to talk about “AI” without adding to the anthropomorphization

artificial intelligence → probabilistic automation

hybrid intelligence → augmented human intelligence

image recognition → image labeling

speech recognition → automatic transcription

the model shows bias → the model reflects bias

model mistakes → model errors

chatbots are good at … → chatbots are good for …

hallucination → undesirable output

goal → success condition

prompt → text input

answer → output

chatbot / conversational agent → conversation simulator

ChatGPT assisted students → the students used ChatGPT

revealing the solution → displaying the solution

AI agent → probabilistic, unverified software manipulator

who’s right? → is the machine output correct?

they produce results → the team uses it [the system] to produce results

The proposed language can be clunky, but maybe that is a good thing.

AI Economics for Dummies

We hope these examples help clarify the inner workings of AI economics.

Yes, thank you. Now it makes sense … *mumbles* where did I stash my guillotine again?

“Have conviction in what you want to share with the world.” – Unsung

On top of all that, we can add what Brownlee started with in his video: overeager A:B tests feel like software’s version of gaslighting. How can you trust an app if it feels like it’s changing without rhyme and reason seemingly on a weekly basis, whose changes are not announced or documented anywhere (small A:B tests never are), and when other people don’t see the things you see?

Are A-B-tests mostly HARKing?

The Next Hype

My friend quite convincingly argued that the next hype will be “Terraforming“.

I sure hope not.

Present Company Excepted

If we want something different for children – and by extension, something different for society as a whole – then we probably need to articulate a progressive vision for education. Because we should want to ensure that a pushback on “the digital” doesn’t simply result in the same bad shit, just in analog form.

To Dismantle Democracy, You Subvert Public Schools

The subversion of democracy – at its core, that is what the efforts to undermine public school truly are – has shifted the burden of changing “the system” onto the individual. Such is goal of the neoliberal fantasy, in which everything is reduced to a market transaction.

As such, it’s up to individual parents and individual students to make “the right choices” – even though it’s so clear that the institutions they must navigate are social, both in origin and in practice, and the only way to address the grave flaws that remain in these systems is political. The only way forward is together; our responsibility is shared; it is collective.