I think even the idea there’s anything to name is part of the problem. It’s like “cryptocurrency” and “web 3” and (to a large extent) “self-driving cars”; you start with the kernel of some modestly interesting idea, but it’s fluffed and pumped and lit up until we’re just discussing a big empty ball of air.
What 2023 calls “AI” may someday have its place, like Fourier transforms or thermoplastic co-molding – and I suppose it’ll need a name in the specialist literature – but I’m not even sure about that, as it’s a very expensive way to achieve not much.
It makes me think of the CM Kornbluth short story The Marching Morons, where the elite can’t provide the masses with the 300mph highways and rocket ships they expect, so they just fake it by adding sound effects and changing the speedometers in regular cars, because the population are dumb swine anyway.
That’s how tech companies are treating us when they pretend their expensive new autocorrect software means they’ve delivered Skynet. The only bit Kornbluth got wrong was thinking the elites would be smart enough not to buy their own bullshit.
