this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2024
697 points (94.6% liked)
Showerthoughts
29652 readers
1211 users here now
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- Avoid politics (NEW RULE as of 5 Nov 2024, trying it out)
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
There's a difference between objecting to misuse of language and "telling everyone how they should use language" - you may not have intended it, but you used a straw man argument there.
What we all should be acutely aware of (but unfortunately many are not) is how language is used to harm humans, animals or our planet.
Fascists use language to create "outgroups" which they then proceed to dehumanize and eventually violate or murder. Capitalists speak about investor risks to justify return on invest, and proceed to lobby for de-regulation of markets that causes human and animal suffering through price gouging and factory farming livestock. Tech corporations speak about "Artificial Intelligence" and proceed to persuade regulators that - because there's "intelligent" systems - this software may be used for autonomous systems that proceed to cause injury and death on malfunctions.
Yes, all such harm can be caused by individuals in daily life - individuals can be murderers or extort people on something they really need, or a drunk driver can cause an accident that kills people. However, the language that normalizes or facilitates such atrocities or dangers on a large scale, is dangerous and therefore I will proceed to continue calling out those who want to label the shitty penny market LLMs and other deep learning systems as "AI".