A hacker was once a computer enthusiast, and the media made it into a name for criminals who break into other people’s systems.
Decades ago, people started using baud when they meant BPS. Not many technical people back then, but it wasn’t possible to correct the few who made the mistake. Even one top member of the CCC (Chaos Computer Club) said it’s just “baud” now, no matter the real meaning.
(baud = symbols per second. A symbol can transport multiple bits, so a V.32 modem with 9600 bps worked at 2400 baud, 4 bits per symbol.)
GIF is an image format. Multiple frames stored in such a file can get played like a video. But today every video without sound gets called a GIF.
AI is an old term. But today most people say AI but only mean genAI.
It’s even more absurd: There are gamers who demand computer games without AI. WTF?
AI was always part of computer games. Even the early computerized board games. I remember Half-Life fans loving the enemy AI. And I think one of the games in the Wolfenstein franchise had enemies that found cover when shot at. That’s normal, old AI. Not genAI.
If AI is really lost, how do we discuss the thing that was once considered AI?
I work in crypto. No, not “cryptocurrency”.
‘AI’ has been a marketing term since it was conjured in 1956, nothing of value has been lost in it being assimilated by a grift.
That’s the fun part - you don’t! In the absolutist landscape of social media it’s impossible to discuss subjects where every comment is reduced to which of two polar opposite sides you are on. Either you hate capitalism or hate socialism. Either you are pro-AI and all the evils anyone has ever associated with it, or you’re a tech-bro who wants to ruin the environment building datacenters. Many subjects in online discussions have reached the “Why bother?” stage.
I had this happen with 3D (as in computer graphics, 3D animation…) when films started releasing in stereo. Fortunately it’s mostly a thing of the past now
no one says Baud, that one is up for grabs
Baud.
Now think about “theory”: the popular meaning¹ and the original meaning, the one used in science².
¹ “it’s just an idea”
² “it is proven beyond doubt with the current knowledge”Many people who know the difference between theory and hypothesis say hypothesis when they mean hypothesis.
Lol, no they don’t. Because outside of a scientific setting- the words are synonyms. Listed as such within any modern dictionary or thesaurus. Just because YOU have a narrow understanding of a word, doesn’t make its use outside of that scope wrong.
"the·o·ry /ˈTHirē/ noun noun: theory; plural noun: theories
a supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained."
"hy·poth·e·sis /hīˈpäTHəsəs/ noun noun: hypothesis; plural noun: hypotheses
a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation."
It’s even more absurd: There are gamers who demand computer games without AI. WTF?
They don’t want genAI slop for visuals, writing, and other creative things in games. They are using AI in the context of those things and even give examples about how AI upscaling of textures in game design looks shitty and don’t want voice actors to be replaced with fake voices. They still want human creative involvement front and center because all the llm/genai image stuff is just ripping off existing stuff in the worst ways.
They aren’t talking about pathing or gameplay ai that has been around forever because the term AI has been coopted by genAI and that is what they are referring to.
They aren’t talking about pathing or gameplay ai that has been around forever because the term AI has been coopted by genAI and that is what they are referring to.
That was OP’s whole point
Then why would it be absurd for gamers to demand games without AI if the gamers don’t literally mean the older types of AI?
In video games, (enemy) AI can mean a pathfinding algorithm and a couple rules regarding the distance to the player
Because AI used to mean the older types of AI. It’s an example how the meaning of AI changed which OP is complaining about.
OP is very much aware of this. You missed their point.
Whoosh
“Hacker” and “AI” are words made mostly useless by widespread misunderstandings about what they mean. “Baud” and “GIF” are words made more useful by people not caring about the technical details of what they used to mean.
That does not make it impossible to say things about hackers or AI. If you’ve got something substantial to say on either topic it’s not that hard to make it clear in context that you’re using the word in an unusually correct way.
I remember how everyone talked about how the first Half-Life game implemented AI so well. The enemies were actually cunning, especially by the standards of the time; One enemy grunt would chase you into cover and have another grunt throw a grenade, while a third one circled around.
If a game today was released with a rumor of having “great AI implementation”, a lot of people would understandably steer clear.
Don’t worry: it will be “Super Intelligence“ now.
There’s a German (kids’) story about someone who was renaming everything. He called the table a chair. But he then had to give the chair a new name.
Trump forgot to give the former superintelligence a new name.
I miss leetspeak personally
How do we discuss anything when different people mean different things but use the same words? We all have weird perceptions of scale. Ask an american how far away ‘far away’ is. Then ask a European. Ask someone how they define ‘smart.’ Then ask someone who fits the first one’s definition. You can get probably a dozen definitions each for words like ‘friend,’ ‘trans,’ ‘fascist,’ ‘appropriate for children,’ or just ‘child.’ Some people are dedicated to precision of language but society is full of people who say ‘It was bluh,’ because they either cannot, or just as often will not, put in the mental effort to find the words to express what they mean. Add in how most people don’t have the time/bandwidth to learn what AI is, (or LLM, or genAI, or agentic, or neural networks, or conditionals, or statistical modeling, or anything else) but still want to feel like they do, so they map ‘AI’ onto some pre-existing concept in their head so they don’t have to learn a new word.
Take advantage of yet another communication hook that the old internet gave us: word tagging.
You can for example request comments on 90s!AI or you can ask someone to convert a image!GIF for you.
Sorry, I wasn’t online before 1988.
Haha. Language, culture and society, golly all I can say is, sometimes it do be like that…
“GIF” as in giraffe, btw.
You forgot the biggest pronunciation hijack of the century.
If the inventor of .GIF was a linguist, maybe we would have used his suggestion.
Gerraffe it is.
Some words that begin in gi have a j sound and some have a g sound. There’s no rule. English just be like that.
There’s giraffe and there’s girl.
There’s gibberish and there’s gibbon.
There’s gigantic and there’s gigabyte.
There’s ginger and there’s gingham.
The whole debate on GIF is dumb. Both pronunciations are acceptable. I would say it like gift personally, but there’s no reason to think that gif- has to sound like g vs j. There’s just no rule for it in English.
It’s one of the few playful arguments left in this world, I think. If there is one that can still be had online, it’s probably this one.
To be honest, I pronounce gif like “gif” or “gif” depending on my mood.
While my personal bias is in the creators favor, it doesn’t seem to me that GIF is even a proper word to begin with. It’s an abbreviation and a format extension. As such, there aren’t any rules that should be applied even if there were rules that could.
File extensions have such a wide variety of pronunciations it makes “gif” irrelevant anyway. (Is it E-X-E or is it “ex-ee”?)
I’ve always disliked these short and sweet justifications for one pronunciation over another as there’s a million justifications that can go either way.
Here’s an arguably more more apt example considering it contains every letter from the original acronym: “GIF” as in gift.
In my opinion, go with the one the causes less confusion. There’s already a brand using the “JIF” pronunciation and nothing else using the “GIF” pronunciation so I prefer the hard G pronunciation.
The developers of PNG at least documented the pronunciation right from the start: ping
I still call it P N G
