"Basically pleasant bureaucrat" vs. "Sexy murder poet"

Travis LaCroix, Fintan Mallory, and Sasha Luccioni. "Strategic polysemy in AI discourse: A philosophical analysis of language, hype, and power." In The 2026 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, 2026:

Abstract: This paper examines the strategic use of language in contemporary artificial intelligence (AI) discourse, focusing on the widespread adoption of metaphorical or colloquial terms like “hallucination”, “chain-of-thought”, “introspection”, “language model”, “alignment”, and “agent”. We argue that many such terms exhibit strategic polysemy: they sustain multiple interpretations simultaneously, combining narrow technical definitions with broader anthropomorphic or common-sense associations. In contemporary AI research and deployment contexts, this semantic flexibility produces significant institutional and discursive effects, shaping how AI systems are understood by researchers, policymakers, funders, and the public. To analyse this phenomenon, we introduce the concept of glosslighting: the practice of using technically redefined terms to evoke intuitive—often anthropomorphic or misleading—associations while preserving plausible deniability through restricted technical definitions. Glosslighting enables actors to benefit from the persuasive force of familiar language while maintaining the ability to retreat to narrower definitions when challenged. We argue that this practice contributes to AI hype cycles, facilitates the mobilisation of investment and institutional support, and influences public and policy perceptions of AI systems, while often deflecting epistemic and ethical scrutiny. By examining the linguistic dynamics of glosslighting and strategic polysemy, the paper highlights how language itself functions as a sociotechnical mechanism shaping the development and governance of AI.

This reminded me of a discussion from 1956, featured in a 2025 post by Cosma Shalizi, "On Feral Library Card Catalogs, or, Aware of All Internet Traditions", Three-toed Sloth 4/16/2025:

Back when all this was beginning, in the spring of 1956, Allen Newell and Herbert Simon thought that "complex information processing" was a much better name than "artificial intelligence" [9]:

The term "complex information processing" has been chosen to refer to those sorts of behaviors — learning, problem solving, and pattern recognition — which seem to be incapable of precise description in any simple terms, or perhaps, in any terms at all. [p. 1]
Even though our language must still remain vague, we can at least be a little more systematic about what constitutes a complex information process.

1. 1. A complex process consists of very large numbers of subprocesses, which are extremely diverse in their nature and operation. No one of them is central or, usually, even necessary.
   2. The elementary component processes need not be complex; they may be simple and easily understood. The complexity arises wholly from the pattern in which these processes operate.
   3. The component processes are applied in a highly conditional fashion. In fact, large numbers of the processes have the function of determining the conditions under which other processes will operate.

[p. 6]

If "complex information processing" had become the fixed and common name, rather than "artificial intelligence", there would, I think, be many fewer myths to contend with. To use a technical but vital piece of meta-theoretical jargon, the former is "basically pleasant bureaucrat", the latter is "sexy murder poet" (at least in comparison).

That 2024 skeet's thread continues with this lovely flow chart:

Cosma's post includes this ChatGPT-generated image of Feral Library Catalogs: