How we speak about technology and humans

From ‘googling’ to ‘human-generated content’

Many publications have said they will not accept any AI-generated content any more. The words they use are AI-generated and human-generated, taking us another step further from what writing used to be. I understand the need to differentiate, but humans don’t generate content, they write stories. Or film videos, take pictures, or make music. AI can generate these things (how well it does it is not under discussion). Responsible language development is crucial for ethical AI development in the future, and people need to take charge.

It’s natural that technology shapes language — it always has. Writing, the printing press, the telegraph, the phone, the Internet. Many changes to how we speak, of course. The Internet, though, is something that still keeps changing language. Gretchen McCulloch wrote about this in her book Because Internet, which I enjoyed very much— a summary is on my book blog. But that was in 2019. A lot has changed in 4 years.

Amber Case wrote about truthy tech trends here:

The far more tangible concern is AI being abused and misunderstood right now. People have already died or been seriously hurt due to the mistaken belief that cars really can “self-drive”, or that ChatGPT “knows” how to diagnose medical conditions. We’re distracted from discussing the real and current problems with AI due to the seductive power of truthy depictions of AI. (my emphasis)