Have you ever noticed how the absence of a specific word to describe a specific experience or phenomenon makes that phenomenon harder to recognize and talk about? But once we coin a term—cancel culture, ghosting, greenwashing, doomscrolling—collective understanding and discussion can then take off. Before the word “gaslighting” became widely used, it wasn’t easy to explain the kind of deception deliberately designed to make a person question entirely valid thoughts and experiences. Now, it’s easier to recognize and call out.
Seemingly overnight, the world in which I live has become a world where, if someone talks or listens to an AI model as if it were a human, they’re not considered unhinged or even unusual. We imagine the “assistant” we’re interacting with is “thinking,” not “computing.” And because we’ve made models that speak like us, and given them names like us, it’s become normal to speak to them, and even think of them, as we would other humans. It’s still unusual to declare love for them, but to think of a tool as “you” and not “it,” or to thank one and say “please” to it, is not.
The speed at which AI is advancing, and the ways its advancement are changing how we think and work and relate, currently outpace our ability to describe and discuss its impact. This troubles me, because it means we’re not equipped to properly understand and explain what it’s doing to us, both individually and collectively.
The speed at which AI is advancing, and the ways its advancement are changing how we think and work and relate, currently outpace our ability to describe and discuss its impact.
When asked about the connection between caring about how we speak, and caring about each other, academic and linguistic expert Marilyn McEntyre once used the analogy of caring for the environment, and in particular, the soil used to grow crops.
“It seems to me that caring for words is like that,” she said. “The discourse or the discursive environment we inhabit is like the natural environment we inhabit. Words can get used up. Some words need to lie fallow for a while. Words can be treated as resources and exploited like resources, or they can be really carefully cultivated for good use.”
I know words are emerging: we call low quality AI output “slop,” we call professionals who use AI effectively “superworkers,” and we call audio and images we can’t distinguish from real recordings of real people “deep fakes.” But we still need words to describe what AI is doing to us, words for the symptoms and effects that we might wish to avoid.
One new word, or a reappropriation of an existing word, that I could really use right now, would be one that describes a very particular type of bewilderment. It’s the feeling I have when a behavior that would have been considered unconscionable, absurd, or insane even just a few years ago, is now treated as normal. A student outsourcing the writing of an essay. A worker outsourcing the writing of an email. A grown adult treating a digital construct as a friend. The term “parasocial relationships” now applies to both “bonds” formed with robots as well as perceived bonds with celebrities. But is there a word for the feeling that the world has gone mad? That cheating, deceiving, and deluding each other and ourselves is now acceptable, even inconsequential?
I expect a word that describes the books, films, and songs that we know to be made without generative AI because they preceded its existence, is already emerging; and that there are already circles where they’re valued and admired with newfound appreciation. I know that post-AI, artists can say they didn’t use it, but it’s difficult to prove.
I’d also like a word for the feeling of indignation triggered by others assuming one has used AI when they did not. For the realization that the onus is now on the creator to declare and prove they didn’t use AI, which might prove impossible or more trouble than it’s worth.
Related is a sense that the ways we thought and acted a few short years ago—when authorship mattered, when cheating and plagiarism were wrong, when various tasks were expected to take time and effort—have not just changed, but been forgotten; that some kind of amnesia has wiped our collective memory.
Am I being sentimental, or was there a time when, if asked whether we’d not only use, but willingly rely on a tool that occasionally saves us time but was made using stolen material, often gets things wrong, and has a huge environmental cost, that we’d hesitate? If it weren’t a tool but a person who always complimented us and told us what we wanted to hear, I think they’d get the sack—even if they were cheap to employ and disarmingly persuasive. But now, not only do employers allow their people to use an unreliable tool to complete a task, but most seem to want them to.
There’s another feeling that doesn’t strike me suddenly so much as dawn on me gradually. It’s the heart-sinking realization that words I’ve been reading in good faith, words that I’ve assumed were written or spoken by a human—perhaps someone I know, even—likely weren’t. The feeling also comes when amazing photographs or footage trigger doubt instead of awe. Which is then followed by the ache of nostalgia for before. Back when…
Is it just me? Or would it help if there were words for these feelings and experiences? Would the ability to name them help us to navigate them? Would they offer some validation? Some consolation? Some agency? Would they fuel some resistance?
The Bible, which contains the wisest words ever penned, tells us humans are unique. We were made in God’s image. If we want to be salt and light in this place; to stand up for what’s true; to care about the means and not just the ends; to value integrity over efficiency, and the getting of wisdom over getting things done; then we need to stop accepting every feature tech companies serve up to us, stop conforming to the patterns of this world, and start exercising discernment. When what we’re being served hurts the environment, our relationships, and our capacity to think for ourselves, we shouldn’t just eat it up.
One reason AI is such a powerful tool is that language is a powerful tool. We need to look at what AI is doing to us and name it and discuss it. We also need to speak in ways that distinguish machines that calculate and compute from human beings who think, believe, and feel.
Words can not only describe reality, but shape it as well. Their absence can add to our confusion and foster division and delusion. But when we use them with care, they can clarify a phenomenon or condition, and foster understanding. In this dizzying age, in these wild times, may we use our words well.
