Smart (part 6) - a world view we don't share

This is the sixth and final post in the Smart series where I have been exploring why so much of the writing about ‘artificial intelligence’ causes me such irritation. I’ve identified so many wordly issues with key terms like intelligence, language, agency, learning, personality, decision-making, etc. You can read previous posts here: 

• Smart (part 1) - now did things get to be smart
• Smart (part 2) - a way with words
• Smart (part 3, an interlude) - toons on AI perils
• Smart (part 4) - convincing or human hacking
• Smart (part 5) - the not-so-secret AI agents

This post will draw on all this previous content. 

Okay, it’s definitely time to stop adding to the plethora of writing about so-called ‘AI’ . 

But before I do, I must spend some time exploring some better names, more accurate names, less misleading names. Alternative names that can help us be smart about this amazing technology. Alternative names that might help us avoid selling off our future cheaply.

Smart (part 5) - the not-so-secret AI agents

First an apology: I know I said I would finish this series with this post, but the word agent started coming up everywhere. I had to explore (just a little more) the latest ways we are being convinced (aka tricked) that a sophisticated program is an agent with human-like intelligence.

In part 4, I explained how the first required step in convincing someone that a thing is intelligent is to convince them that it is an agent – an individual with potential agency over its own actions, behaviours and responses. I highlighted what I called ‘human hacking’: the covert and deliberate programming of Smart ChatBots to use language that implies the existence of an agent, and then relying on humans to do what they always do: impute agency, intelligence, sentience, and even consciousness.

Well, now the techies have abandoned the covert methods, to openly declare that 2025 is going to be the year of the AI agent. 

And here I was thinking 2025 was the Year of Glaciers' Preservation; Peace and Trust; Quantum Science and Technology, and Cooperatives.

Smart (part 4) - convincing or human hacking?

The problem with taking so long to write this Smart series about Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the 34,372 extra articles published on the topic in the meantime! 

Interestingly, though, not much has really changed. I still find most of this writing incredibly irritating and I'm still trying to work out exactly why. Here is a brief summary of my explorations so far.

In Smart part 1, I pointed out that intelligence is a complex concept (and not a thing) created to talk about human abilities. Consequently, our tests of intelligence are based on human attributes and physiological limitations. Intelligence is a contested concept – there is not broad agreement about what it even means. I asked, given intelligence is not a discrete thing in humans, how could we actually know when it ‘appears’ in machines?

In Smart part 2, I explored the concept of language to show why the conversational abilities of ChatGPT and its ilk are easily explained by sophisticated programming and the nature of language use by humans. It’s nothing to do with intelligence. And yet, the tech developers seem to be using the natural language capacity of the smart bots as a (quite flawed) proxy for intelligence. (Smart part 3 was a diversion into some of the fabulous toons on this topic, but now back to being serious!) 

As a reference, I keep coming back to the Turing Test that says if a machine can convince a knowledgeable human observer of its intelligence, then it should be considered to be intelligent. 

In this post, I explore how the focus of recent development has been more on the convincing than on the intelligence part of the Turing Test. Convincing, or perhaps more accurately it could be called human hacking.

Words - betrayed, but still beautiful

So, it's a new year. Wordly Explorations is still holding on, though with a heavy heart. 

In the chaos of contemporary politics, it is the betrayal of words, and then of people through these injured words, that particularly weighs on me. Do people who lie so readily, who misuse and abuse words to advance their personal power, who aim to obfuscate using words that were entrusted with complex and hopeful concepts... do they not appreciate the beauty of language at all? 

Today I read a review of a book, supposedly for children, that presents the most beautiful love letter to words themselves. I felt joy that, yes, many people continue to find words themselves beautiful and mystical and worthy of deep attention. 

While I gather my thoughts to continue the Smart series, I want to reproduce that book review in toto. I do hope the author, Maria Popova of The Marginalian, understands my need to do so. And if you enjoy this review, consider subscribing to her wonderful blog; it's full of interesting and beautiful books described through careful, thoughtful and gentle words.

Below is the full text taken from https://www.themarginalian.org/2025/02/04/the-wordy-book-julie-paschkis/ 

Smart (part 3, an interlude) - toons on AI perils

Source: SMBC

Among the endless articles about what we call ‘artificial intelligence’, so much is written about its potential perils. So much speculation about disasters. So many potential catastrophes. 

The fascinating thing to me is what all this catastrophising says about our nature, what we pay attention to, and what we fear. 

However to contain the Smart series on AI (see Part 1 and Part 2 so far), I won’t explore this topic in a blog post. Next post, my focus will return to the wordly misuse that characterises this area, because I think it explains why many of the upbeat claims and terrifying disasters are unlikely. And it points to the things that really should be getting our attention right now.

Instead, as an interlude (and to distract from how long I’m taking to write a post these days!), I wanted to share some of the many cartoons¹ about potential AI catastrophe that I’ve collected through this exploration. 

In way fewer words than I ever could, many wonderful cartoonists have explore the many ways we fear it could all go wrong…

Smart (part 2) - a way with words

In part 1, I started exploring why the myriad articles on Artificial Intelligence (AI) leave me feeling so frustrated. 

To start, I explored the abstract and contested concept of intelligence in humans, and then as applied to machines. I concluded that while so-called AI can do some gobsmackingly sophisticated and incredibly useful things, and can far surpass human capacities in specific functions, this isn’t what I would label intelligent. 

So, I worked out one major source of frustration for me is the lack of sophisticated understanding about intelligence in humans by those trying to create an artificial version of intelligence. Disconcertingly, computer science is building on the computational model¹ of human intelligence just as cognitive science is abandoning it!   

Despite my personal doubts, the latest AI-based chatbots appear to many users to be really quite smart. They communicate via voice or text, using language a lot like humans do. AI programmers are focusing their efforts on the ability of smart chat bots to interact with humans in natural language.  

Are the AI research scientists claiming that language makes machines intelligent? That sounds like Wordly Exploration territory!

Attention - paid or stolen?

By the end of this post I will have revealed my deepest secret, something about which I feel deep shame. I've never told anyone before but it's time I revealed all.

Um… no I won't. 

I just wrote that sentence to get your attention and I'm admitting it.

Apparently, that's a thing now. On social media I see people sometimes writing, 'Oh I just said that to get your attention' or they might add a picture of a dog which they describe as 'unrelated image for attention'.

Strange thing: attention. Something of yours I can 'get'. And now you are 'giving' your attention to this post. 

But did you actually give me your attention? 

Or did I take it from you?  

Evolving (part 4) - the language dance

Parody on the March of Progress

The Evolving series began by looking at Darwin's ground-breaking theory of 'descent with modification' to explain biodiversity in organic lifeforms. In parts 2 and 3, we explored how people have misinterpreted and misused his work ever since, including loading it with various moral judgements. 

Our everyday use of the words evolve and evolution reveals that we¹ think of evolution as purposeful and progressive improvement (a contradiction of Darwin's theory) but also natural and scientific. This (mis)interpretation provides what I call a 'sciencey veneer' over any number of beliefs.

We think of 'evolutionary progress' as how the world works. This understanding is so widely shared it is a common meme. 

So, I'm finally back to my starting point for exploring the words evolve and evolution: what do we mean when we say that language 'evolves'? Why don't we just say that language changes? Is language change like biological evolution? Are we saying that language improves and progresses over time? 

Unsurprisingly, the answers are not straightforward! 

Obsolete - who says words are no longer useful?

If you love words, you may be like me and particularly relish uncommon old words. Words that have fallen out of use, that sound extravagant and fanciful to the contemporary ear; words the dictionary still includes but describes as 'obsolete'. 

All Grandiloquent images from 
Grandiloquent Word of the Day

If you share this love, you will enjoy the site Grandiloquent Word of the Day by Jason Travis Ott who shares his work widely on social media.  

Ott's artwork, his Victorian-era characters, and funny quotes make the words come alive again for a minute. But the words are really not alive, they are obsolete. If they are not used, they are dead. 

Were they grieved on their way to obsolescence? Did someone, at some time, say to themselves (or their barber), "Oh, why don't we hear the word 'palpebrous' anymore? It's such a handy word, so why has it fallen out of use?" I know I just did (to self, not barber). 

Well, yes, they are obsolete, I rarely know any of the Grandiloquent words. But who decided they were no longer useful? How did they fall out of use? Were they perhaps pushed? 

Language - falling off the bars

Source

By now, you can no doubt tell a bit about what I like from the topics I write about.

I love words. I relish language. I eat metaphors for breakfast. And I believe you can never have enough cartoons.

So, instead of the regular post, I bring you a state of Wordly Explorations - with words, language, metaphor and cartoon.

This toon by SMCB is one of my favourites. It says everything I've tried to say in my thousands of words, ridiculously long posts and endless series. Only considerably more nimbly and gracefully, which is appropriate given the content of the cartoon.

As SMBC says, 'Language is like gymnastics' (simile, sure, not metaphor, but good enough when you're pressed for time) works for the conflicting prescriptivist, descriptivist and pragmatist perspectives. That's a simile doing overtime!

Language is like gymnastics. There are rules and standards and those who fail to follow them should be chastised.

Language is like gymnastics! There are lots of forms and none is preferable to any other.

Language is like gymnastic. There isn't a best gymnastics, but most of you are really, really shitty at gymnastics.

I agree with all that, but today I have a different take. Let's call it the language 'performativist' perspective.

Language is like gymnastics. There's performance anxiety; there's pain and sometimes injury in the process of nailing the 'position' you are working on. 

It's hard to focus on your goal on the parallel bars, when you can't even get to the gym due to everything else happening in your life. The coach yells at you about discipline and dedication, but gymnastics is not the only thing in your life. It's not dedication you lack, but days with more than 24 hours!

Sometimes, despite trying your best, you just lose your grip, miss the bar, and you don't get a post written. 

Source: Laura Sweet

Your eyes go wide, you feel fear as you realise what is about to happen, then you fall down hard on your backside.

You get up, and things are still okay.

And you take another run up and hope you'll get it next time.

Post truth (part 12) - reminders about words and truth

It's not necessary to think about words all the time, but sometimes it is essential.  

Over the last two posts (parts 10 and 11), I explored how words are representations of our experience of reality, and yet we treat them as part of the things they represent. We also tend to assume that if a word exists, a 'thing' for that word must also exist, even if the word represents an idea (like freedom) rather than a thing. 

Source

Because we use words to make sense of the world, and because we need a stable sense of reality to function, we treat words as if they were objective, neutral and stable. We ignore that we use subjective, value-laden, abstract representations (words) to construct our sense of truth. We need both to be stable and solid - so we just assume they are. 

This false assumption is brilliant and productive. With it, we create and share amazing knowledge, technology, literature, and much more with words.

However, it is foolhardy to forget entirely that we make such an assumption. It dulls our awareness to the deliberate destruction of words as a way to supplant the social construction of truth.

Further developing the house construction metaphor for truth, in the previous post I added handmade unfired bricks to build with. They are a metaphor for our human tendency to treat words as objective and solid things, despite being subjective and abstract representations. With these solid - yet easily damaged and eroded - bricks we build our floor of facts and our walls of explanatory stories. The house feels snug and safe. 

We forget all about words and the social construction of truth. Luckily a whole pile of people is ready to remind us. 

Enough - when it means anything but

In part 1, I explored the reasons the word enough is spelled so weirdly, and traced over 1000 years of the history of the English language to do so. 

Source

In recent times, numerous attempts have been made to make English spelling more regular, less chaotic, but all have failed. Yes, there really was a group called the Speling Reform Asoshiasun. 

So enough continues to be spelled as enough. 

Spelling is one of the areas of language; it changes over time through popular use, but history shows it rarely does so through dictate and rule making. 

However, it's in popular use that the word enough gets totally weird. Enough might occasionally be spelled enuf, and we get it; but sometimes its meaning changes within a single sentence. And we get that too. That's why 'Enuf is enuf' makes sense.

The way we use words beyond their literal meaning can tell us so much about ourselves. 

What can we learn by exploring the word enough? 

Enough - when enuf is not enauph

A group of protestors paced outside the annual local spelling bee. 

Ruly protestors Source

But they weren't protesting about the spelling bee. Their protest was against spelling itself.

'Simplify English spelling!', they demanded. Their posters read, 'Spelling shuud bee lojical' and 'enuf is enuf!'.

The spelling bee continued unaffected inside, as young students spelled nemesis, apartheid and campanile. Enough wasn't on the list though! 

The protestors eventually went home, having pointed out what we all know: English spelling seems chaotic and inconsistent. 

Why can't it be simpler? Why isn't enough spelled as enuf? And even though it isn't, why does 'Enuf is enuf' make sense anyway? 

Diversity - defeated by the default

Diversity (likewise inclusion) is a word I hear frequently. Diversity appears in technology, education, the arts, music, and science, sometimes accompanied by 'diversity' targets. We hear about the diversity of culture and opinion in Australia. Many companies have Diversity and Inclusion Divisions with KPIs for their annual reports.

 

The driver for diversity is fairness. It entails welcoming all people, ensuring decision-making groups are representative of the broader society, and more people can participate in a greater range of life's opportunities. 

But I think diversity and its adjective diverse are most often just buzz words: they make a 'buzz', but they communicate little (likewise inclusion and inclusive).

 

The word diversity should convey an important idea: diversity is a positive characteristic of societies and groups. But the word has been emptied of this idea in many uses. This has happened through a subtle linguistic 'shift' to use diverse to describe individual people, usually meaning a person from a minority group.

 

Is this just a normal change in meaning? Is it just the all too common loss of a useful word? (I've written previously about accepting that words can change meaning over time, even really useful words, see Alternate - a small grief.)

 

Or is there something else going on here? Has this subtle linguistic 'shift' been engineered? It seems to me that this way of using the word diverse actually serves to keep people out.

Creative - of course you are!

A pandemic is a lesson in living with reality. It will be a hard lesson, there will be grief and heartache.

For many across the world, the Covid-19 pandemic means financial and health insecurity. Fear of disease and death is compounded by loss of income or housing, and accompanied by unease about governments seeking only to seize more power.

For many of us in Australia right now, though, we are simply stuck at home. After the initial anxiety spike, the panic buying and the grief of ruined plans, we find ourselves facing a new reality of being in the one place, all the time, without our usual activities and distractions.

Those of us away from the 'front line' of Covid-19 have a sudden excess of time. It feels strange.

This strange feeling is largely the lack of opportunity to consume.

Wild and zany - whose adjective is it anyway?

In these days of ubiquitous social media, online dating and 'tell us how good you are' job interviews, we frequently need to describe ourselves.

To do this, we use adjectives like friendly, fun, down-to-earth, positive, thoughtful, creative, caring, trustworthy, dedicated, motivated, effective. You can even find helpful lists online if you need more impressive adjectives for your profile.

When I was young, we were schooled in modesty: to assume effort, character and ability would speak for themselves. Self promotion was frowned upon. So, the contemporary need to self-describe and self-promote has been uncomfortable for me.

But I'm used to it now. I no longer panic in interviews when asked to describe myself in three words, and I follow the job seeker's guideline: 'Don't be too modest'. 

But sometimes the way people talk about themselves, well, it just doesn't feel right to me.

Source: Public Domain

Here are a few examples that feel off beam:

• We're soooo crazy! - group of performers in an interview after a concert
• We're wild; we're out of control; look out world! - group of 30-something football fans
• My parties are always great because I'm so zany! - woman at public function she organised
• We're all really cool; you'll like working here - new work colleague.

When a person says these sorts of things, it's not that I disagree with them. What feels strange and a bit off is that they use these adjectives to describe themselves.

I find myself wondering, is it actually their adjective to use?