Yes, I have talked about this expression ‘artificial intelligence’ (normally abbreviated to just ‘AI’) before.
In fact, more than once.
The absurdity of this expression bothers me, so I keep coming back to it.
Non-thinking journalists (a bunch of sheep!) keep rattling off ‘AI’ as if it meant something coherent.
In the past I’ve pointed out that what computers do is super-speed calculations—and that is just calculating, not intelligence.
But this time I want to switch the focus to the qualifying adjective ‘artificial.’
What does that mean?
And what does it tell us about the reality of ‘AI’?
The word ‘artificial’ turns up in English in the 1400s and comes from classical Latin via Anglo-Norman French.
Its core meaning is ‘an imitation of’ (Oxford English Dictionary).
In other words, it is not the real thing—just an imitation of the real thing.
The Collins English Dictionary suggests that the notion of ‘artificial’ includes the concept of ‘pretending.’
This makes it clear that ‘AI’ chatbots are just pretending to intelligent when, in reality, they are not.
It is all pretence—just an imitation of the real thing.
Mind you, their act of pretending is very well done—so well done that it will fool a lot of people into thinking that when they are dealing with a chatbot they are dealing with a real (human-like) intelligence.
They are not.
It is all pretence.
That’s what the word ‘artificial’ tells us.
The reality is that in the computer science industry these so-call ‘AI’ computers have another name (their real name, that gives the game away).
They are called LLMs—Large Language Models.
In other words, their sham imitation of intelligence is possible because they are drawing on massive data bases of natural human language.
These huge Large Language storehouse (held in massive banks of servers) means that the replies from chatbots comes in an imitation of natural human language—as a pretence of exhibiting natural intelligence.
But the word ‘artificial’ gives the game away—and admits that this is all a fraud, a pretence, and we should never be fooled into believing that there is any real intelligence involved as any point!
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