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
I don’t let software agents generate text that uses first person pronouns or that addresses the user directly. I think the largest problem AI presents is the psychological abuse of the user and the alienation from social and physical reality that it creates.