Stop calling everything “AI”: A spam filter, a chatbot, and a hospital bed sensor are not the same thing. The case for more precise language, and why journalists are the people most responsible for fixing this mess. (Alexa Steinbrück)
- "AI" is an umbrella term covering everything from a spam filter to a foundation model with billions of parameters, and lumping them together distorts public debate, policy, and regulation.
- The author draws on the "AI Snake Oil" vehicle analogy: a hospital bed sensor is a bicycle, a large language model is a jumbo jet. The differences in energy use, bias risk, and data exploitation are not cosmetic.
- Journalists are specifically named as the people most responsible for shaping public language around AI, which makes imprecise coverage a professional problem, not just a semantic one.
