We call it artificial intelligence. But is it really artificial?
To many the word "artificial" suggests something fake or lesser than and carries a negative connotation (e.g. artificial personality, artificial sweeteners). Yet the systems we’re building are neither toys nor simple imitations, they’re powerful, evolving forms of intelligence that shape our daily lives.
Language frames how we see technology. If we label machine intelligence as "fake" we may limit how we think about it and how we prepare for its impact.
Intelligence exists in many forms: octopuses solving puzzles, ants coordinating as colonies, plants adapting to environments. We don’t dismiss these as “artificial” just because they differ from ours.
Calling machine intelligence artificial emphasizes origin (manufactured) over capability. It risks:
- Reinforcing human intelligence as the "gold standard"
- Framing systems as imitations, not legitimate new forms
- Narrowing our ethical imagination around how we treat them
Other terms can highlight different aspects of these systems:
- By Origin: Synthetic, Constructed
- By Substrate: Digital, Computational, Machine
- By Relationship: Non-Human
None are perfect, but each avoids the baggage of "artificial."
I’ve decided to be more deliberate in the language I use when talking about these technologies. I’ll still use "AI" where necessary as it’s the shared shorthand across industry, academia, and culture, but I’ll also experiment with alternatives that better capture what these systems are, rather than framing them as mere imitations of human thought.
This is not about correcting others or claiming the moral high ground. It’s simply about being intentional with words that influence how we imagine and relate to new forms of intelligence.
Consider:
- What assumptions live inside the words we use?
- How might different naming conventions shift our approach?
- What kind of relationship with new intelligences do we want to create?
Language doesn’t just describe reality, it helps shape it. If we’re going to share our world with new forms of intelligence, we should make an effort to use more positive language to describe them.