In AI, we have something genuinely new - a category of technology that doesn’t fit our existing frames - and we’re trying to describe it with words inherited from the past. Every term we reach for either undersells the thing or oversells it.

“Assistant” makes it sound like a slightly upgraded Clippy. “Tool” makes it sound like a hammer.... See more

it is kind of surprising that none of the major AI labs seem to have put out any deep documentation aimed at non-specialists. There are some guides for programmers or serious prompt engineers, but remarkably little aimed at non-technical folks who actually want to use these systems to do stuff - the vast majority of users

Our current terminology clusters into two failing camps, and both serve interests that aren’t ours.

The diminishing frame - tool, assistant, software, program, bot - licenses cognitive outsourcing without accountability. It creates regulatory blindspots because you can’t harm a tool, you have no obligations to a tool. It permits surveillance under... See more