Dr. Andy Farnell on Why Calling Slop or Chaff "Hey Hi" (AI) Harm Us All, Except for "Ten or Twenty Rich Industrialists"
Three hours ago Dr. Andy Farnell published an article about playing along with the propaganda sold/told by so-called 'AI giants' (slop peddlers shovelling up garbage). He has chosen to focus on what Richard Stallman has long said - if not 'preached' - about "words to avoid" so as to keep debates meaningful. Quoting the article:
As a computer scientist I am saddened. There are enormous benefits to be had from machine learning, advanced signal processing, and agentic approaches that we might more usefully regard as "Next Generation Applications". It's distressing to think that work I've done in my own life, in research and education, would come to such a pathetic, dismal end in the hands of low-IQ hooligans.
It is a disgrace for science that we've let a handful of psychologically frail technofascists, with all their drug-addled ideas and daddy-issues, take the wheel out of the hands of civilised society. When people are unable to distinguish tools with huge social benefit from social control toys of insecure men, it's a double loss.
Recently we ran an episode for some research scientists who formed a company to improve cybersecurity. The initial interview didn't go well. The aims in that episode quickly became rescuing the researchers - who we kinda liked as people - from their own gratuitous and meaningless use of the slop term "AI".
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These are complex matters, so a democratic challenge to toxic tech must come from the people/citizens, but also from within the tech industry itself, if for nothing else but self-preservation. One way to do that is to collectively "change the narrative", which starts with addressing our vocabulary.
Let alone using it, try not saying "AI" for a whole day. It's like the first time you tried to not use a smartphone for a whole day, no? It's very hard work because, as the philosophers Wittgenstein and Ayer would say, you're struggling to find a word for something about which you have no concept. Saying "AI" is just lazily making an agreeable noise. It's a noise that stands-in for an ineffable 'thing' that feels required to get along in company. But that's an illusion.
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rnest Vincent Wright wrote Gadsby, a book of 50,000 words without using the letter 'e' (the most common letter in English). If he could do that, surely we can utter a few sentences about digital technology without saying "AI"?
So, in some upcoming episodes of The Cybershow we've banned the use of the word "AI"! :) Under Gadsby rules we'll all have to talk for an hour without using the dreaded word. Can we do that? One option is to replace every occurrence someone says it with a honking clown horn, or a random word like "hatstand" or "hippopotamus" to emphasise the absurdity.
It's a tough call. It forces one to speak knowledgeably, with clarity and purpose, and to explain concepts, without falling back on commercial vagaries and sales-speak. The point is to expose "AI" as a deflationary marketing term that subtracts value from any discussion of next generation applications, machine learning, machine agency as a legal and cybersecurity matter, advanced signal processing for ingestion and transcription, and so on.
The only true thing about "AI" is that it's artificial.
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Instead we ask you not to "Stop AI", but to "Stop Saying AI". To a great extent the words we use create our reality. Casually saying "AI" colludes with a derelict media by amplifying a polarised "all good versus all evil" narrative. It collapses discussion. Stop saying "AI" and you cut off the oxygen of the malevolent minority.
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!
Repeating "AI" just encourages them. It signals willing ignorance to believe in their magic tricks. When people stop believing in the magic the mighty Wizard of Oz is just a sad, lonely man in a costume. That's pretty close to the truth about Silicon Valley bros, right?
Update: The URL and title have been modified by Andy. We're amending them accordingly, above.