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I was expecting "master" and "slave" to show up since I've seen that argument being made (https://www.eetimes.com/its-time-for-ieee-to-retire-master-slave/ http

I was expecting "master" and "slave" to show up since I've seen that argument being made (https://www.eetimes.com/its-time-for-ieee-to-retire-master-slave/ https://www.eetimes.com/its-time-for-ieee-to-retire-master-s...), but I have a hard time taking it seriously. I agree about AI though. The rush to exploit the phrase as a marketing term has killed it's original meaning. Once we actually have AI we're going to need something else to call it. I've always kind of liked the distinction Mass Effect made between Virtual Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence/Synthetic Intelligence, but I guess it's too late to start calling what we have now VI. Synthetic/Inorganic Intelligence is still on the table for the real thing though and it'd be better than something like AI+ or AI 2.0

Dudeman112 4y ago
>Once we actually have AI we're going to need something else to call it You mean Artificial General Intelligence? ;) On a more serious note, it is a shame that we ended up calling it AI instead of something innocuous like "pattern matching code". There's so much bullshit and misunderstanding that wouldn't be there if we had named it something less impressive
- b3morales 4y ago
  This isn't really a problem of the term itself; it's more that people want their software product to sound impressive, so they borrow the term liberally. That is, it's marketing's fault. People have been arguing since Minsky or before where the "Actual Artificial Intelligence" line falls. Thermostats? Graphing calculators? Roombas? Software games? ...
  - autoexec 4y ago
    > People have been arguing since Minsky or before where the "Actual Artificial Intelligence" line falls. I think it'll find a way to tell us. Same with people worried about giving AI rights. Once it cares enough to ask, it should get them.
yccs27 4y ago
I find it pretty helpful to just accept the new meaning of "artificial intelligence": a program making a decision you didn't explicitly code it to make. Note that this includes even the most basic statistical decision methods, which the term is used for not too infrequently. We already have more specifuc technical words for the approaches that are generally sold as "artificial intelligence", like neural networks/machine learning etc.
oregondan 4y ago
Same (re: master / slave)... At a previous job, a coworker presented a compelling argument for removing "whitelist" and "blacklist" terminology from our codebases / jargon. Even though the etymologies of the words don't describe them as being based on race / racial judgments, their first recorded usages were in the 16th-17th centuries, when mass enslavement was in full swing. Setting aside the historical context, they also help reenforce the idea of "white is good, black is bad" [0]. At that job we moved to terms like excludeList, allowList, denyList, etc. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6148600/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6148600/
- _gabe_ 4y ago
  > Even though the etymologies of the words don't describe them as being based on race / racial judgments Then why should we change them? I know you said: > Setting aside the historical context, they also help reenforce the idea of "white is good, black is bad" But if we can't trust people to infer a word's meaning based on the context, we have a much bigger problem imo. Another example of this is the word gentleman. If you refer to a gentleman's club, that's a very different thing than calling a man a gentleman. We trust that English speaking people don't start conflating the two contexts together, because most people possess the basic ability to understand the idea of context. I don't get when or why we suddenly decided that people can't infer the context of words. And in this specific case, if you can't infer that a blacklist is not a racial insult, but just a term that denotes a list of denials, then you have some other issues to sort out. Put another way, should we stop referring to profitable markets as markets in the black[1] because they put a positive spin on the color black? No, it's just dumb. I trust that the average human is capable of parsing out an inferred context of a common phrase in their native language. Furthermore, master isn't even synonymous with slavery[2]. We have "a master craftsman" and "master chefs", which aren't evil. The word "boss" is also derived from master[0], but I'm sure we would all agree that it's ridiculous to remove the word "boss" from our vernacular because it may have been used to denote something else in the past, and that thing it denoted (master) was used to denote a specific use of the word (slave master) at some point in a specific time of history that was also a bad thing. Edit: I'd also like to add that colors denote a certain symbolism (that may vary across cultures), and has nothing to do with racist intent. White has been used for centuries to denote purity, and black is the opposite of that. People aren't black/white in that sense, because skin color isn't even black/white in that sense. The Bible refers to white as a symbol of purity, but the Jews were not "white" by any means. And apparently in Chinese culture, black is associated with heaven[3]. That doesn't mean that your skin color makes you "heavenly" or "evil". I trust the average person is able to infer context. [0]: https://www.etymonline.com/word/boss https://www.etymonline.com/word/boss [1]: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/black.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/black.asp [2]: https://www.etymonline.com/word/master https://www.etymonline.com/word/master [3]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_in_Chinese_culture https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_in_Chinese_culture

Dudeman112 4y ago

>Once we actually have AI we're going to need something else to call it You mean Artificial General Intelligence? ;) On a more serious note, it is a shame that we ended up calling it AI instead of something innocuous like "pattern matching code". There's so much bullshit and misunderstanding that wouldn't be there if we had named it something less impressive

b3morales 4y ago
This isn't really a problem of the term itself; it's more that people want their software product to sound impressive, so they borrow the term liberally. That is, it's marketing's fault. People have been arguing since Minsky or before where the "Actual Artificial Intelligence" line falls. Thermostats? Graphing calculators? Roombas? Software games? ...
- autoexec 4y ago
  > People have been arguing since Minsky or before where the "Actual Artificial Intelligence" line falls. I think it'll find a way to tell us. Same with people worried about giving AI rights. Once it cares enough to ask, it should get them.

yccs27 4y ago

I find it pretty helpful to just accept the new meaning of "artificial intelligence": a program making a decision you didn't explicitly code it to make. Note that this includes even the most basic statistical decision methods, which the term is used for not too infrequently. We already have more specifuc technical words for the approaches that are generally sold as "artificial intelligence", like neural networks/machine learning etc.

oregondan 4y ago

Same (re: master / slave)... At a previous job, a coworker presented a compelling argument for removing "whitelist" and "blacklist" terminology from our codebases / jargon. Even though the etymologies of the words don't describe them as being based on race / racial judgments, their first recorded usages were in the 16th-17th centuries, when mass enslavement was in full swing. Setting aside the historical context, they also help reenforce the idea of "white is good, black is bad" [0]. At that job we moved to terms like excludeList, allowList, denyList, etc. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6148600/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6148600/

_gabe_ 4y ago
> Even though the etymologies of the words don't describe them as being based on race / racial judgments Then why should we change them? I know you said: > Setting aside the historical context, they also help reenforce the idea of "white is good, black is bad" But if we can't trust people to infer a word's meaning based on the context, we have a much bigger problem imo. Another example of this is the word gentleman. If you refer to a gentleman's club, that's a very different thing than calling a man a gentleman. We trust that English speaking people don't start conflating the two contexts together, because most people possess the basic ability to understand the idea of context. I don't get when or why we suddenly decided that people can't infer the context of words. And in this specific case, if you can't infer that a blacklist is not a racial insult, but just a term that denotes a list of denials, then you have some other issues to sort out. Put another way, should we stop referring to profitable markets as markets in the black[1] because they put a positive spin on the color black? No, it's just dumb. I trust that the average human is capable of parsing out an inferred context of a common phrase in their native language. Furthermore, master isn't even synonymous with slavery[2]. We have "a master craftsman" and "master chefs", which aren't evil. The word "boss" is also derived from master[0], but I'm sure we would all agree that it's ridiculous to remove the word "boss" from our vernacular because it may have been used to denote something else in the past, and that thing it denoted (master) was used to denote a specific use of the word (slave master) at some point in a specific time of history that was also a bad thing. Edit: I'd also like to add that colors denote a certain symbolism (that may vary across cultures), and has nothing to do with racist intent. White has been used for centuries to denote purity, and black is the opposite of that. People aren't black/white in that sense, because skin color isn't even black/white in that sense. The Bible refers to white as a symbol of purity, but the Jews were not "white" by any means. And apparently in Chinese culture, black is associated with heaven[3]. That doesn't mean that your skin color makes you "heavenly" or "evil". I trust the average person is able to infer context. [0]: https://www.etymonline.com/word/boss https://www.etymonline.com/word/boss [1]: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/black.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/black.asp [2]: https://www.etymonline.com/word/master https://www.etymonline.com/word/master [3]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_in_Chinese_culture https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_in_Chinese_culture