What Even Is AI Anymore?

I had a party recently, and at some point a few of us ended up around my desk playing a silly game. I asked: how many computers are on this desk right now?

My friends started guessing. “Well, there’s two laptops and a big screen… but maybe the screen is an all-in-one? So three?” Then someone noticed another laptop hiding behind the monitor. “Four?” But wait, there’s a smartwatch on the desk. Is that a computer? What about the smartphone? The Raspberry Pi Zero tucked in the corner?

We never did settle on an answer. And that’s fine. It was never really about counting.

The word “computer” used to mean a person. Someone who computes. Then it meant a room-sized machine. Then a beige box on a desk. Now it could mean basically anything with a chip in it, but most people just mean a laptop or a desktop. The word changed because the world changed, and we all just went along with it. We didn’t vote on it. There was no committee. It just happened.

I’ve heard people discuss a lot lately whether we “really have AI.” And I understand the frustration behind it. When many of us were younger, “AI” meant something specific. Artificial general intelligence. A mind. Something that could think and reason and want things. What we have now isn’t that. These are large language models. Sophisticated prediction engines. They don’t have desires. They’re not conscious. I’m not here to argue otherwise.

But I’ve also lived long enough to watch a lot of words change meaning.

Did you know “nice” used to mean foolish? It drifted through shy, then delicate, then finally landed on pleasant. “Literally” now means “in effect” (its own opposite), and despite how much that made some of us twitch, the dictionaries eventually gave in. Language is a living thing. It doesn’t ask permission.

/* 1956 - Dartmouth Workshop: "simulate every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence" */
char* AI = "AGI - machines that think";

/* mass adoption, mass marketing, 2022 */
AI = "LLMs + cosmetics";

“AI” has changed too. The term was coined in 1956 at the Dartmouth Workshop, and from day one it meant machines that could “simulate every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence.” Essentially AGI from the start. But whether it was marketing departments who pushed it elsewhere, or all of us collectively deciding to run with the term, it now means something different than it did seventy years ago. When most people say “AI” today, they mean chatbots and image generators and systems that can book flights. That’s just what the word points to now.

I think about this with pronouns sometimes. When I started asking people to use they/them for me, some of my older friends still find it difficult. And many of my younger friends still use she/her. Not out of disrespect or disagreement. It’s just hard to change what you think of when you think of a word, or a concept, or a person you’ve attached a certain word to for years. I try to be gentle about that. Language changing around you is disorienting. It can feel like the ground shifting beneath your feet.

So when I hear someone say “we don’t have AI,” I don’t think they’re wrong. They’re using an older definition, and it’s a valid one. But they’re also talking past everyone else who’s already moved on to the new one. And when I see someone roll their eyes at the correction, I get that too. It’s tiring to be told you’re using a word incorrectly when you’re using it the way everyone around you uses it.

Maybe there’s not much to fight about here. Maybe it’s just a word doing what words do.

If precision matters to you, be precise. Say AGI when you mean AGI. Say sentience when you mean sentience. Say “a chatbot that sometimes hallucinates and sometimes writes really good emails” when you mean that. But I’m not sure we need the outrage. I’m not sure we need to keep drawing battle lines over whose definition is the real one.

Language is difficult and dynamic. Words get appropriated, reclaimed, redefined. It’s been happening for as long as we’ve had language. We can fight it, or we can just… notice it, and be a little gentler with each other about it.

The word changed. The world changed with it. As it does.