Whereas Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and different AI trade leaders can’t cease singing the praises of the know-how, a rising variety of common Individuals are forming a distinct opinion.
In keeping with YouGov information from July, Individuals are more and more more likely to imagine that AI can be unhealthy for people. Particularly, 43% of Individuals say they worry AI will finish the human race (up 6% since March), and 47% imagine that AI may have a web adversarial impact on society (up 7% since March).
With this rise in AI pessimism, there was a surge in new slurs and slang phrases that seize the destructive connotations folks more and more affiliate with AI—and the people who use it. Right here’s a information to the 5 phrases it’s essential know: “AI washing,” “clanker,” “Groksucker,” “slop,” and “slopper.”
AI washing
No, AI hasn’t instantly discovered a solution to do your laundry whilst you do artwork. In the event you hear somebody speaking about “AI washing,” they’re referring to a misleading advertising and marketing apply the place corporations exaggerate the function AI performs of their services or products.
This misleading advertising and marketing apply will get its title from “inexperienced washing,” the place an organization falsely or misleadingly touts its environmentally pleasant insurance policies. Any firm may be responsible of AI washing if it misstates the function AI performs in its merchandise. Corporations in industries which might be extra susceptible to doing this are these within the know-how and finance sectors, which is why the Securities and Alternate Fee (SEC) has publicly warned towards the apply.
“AI washing, whether or not it’s by monetary intermediaries akin to funding advisers and dealer sellers, or by corporations elevating cash from the general public, that AI washing might violate the securities legal guidelines,” former chairman of the SEC Gary Gensler warned in 2024. The present Trump administration additionally appears to be cracking down on AI washing as nicely, in keeping with Holland & Knight’s SECond Opinions Weblog.
If somebody is alleged to be an “AI washer,” it means they’re being accused of providing a product that doesn’t depend on AI as a lot as they are saying it does.
Clanker
That is the latest AI slur on this record, and its use has exploded in current months. As Quick Firm beforehand reported, “clanker” is a derogatory time period for robots. The time period comes from the fictional Star Wars universe, the place droids are sometimes handled as second-class residents at finest.
However more and more, the time period is being adopted not simply to explain our real-world AI-powered robots, however AI programs that threaten our jobs or take away human connections from our lives. One system also known as a “clanker” is the AI chatbot that individuals at the moment are pressured to speak to once they name a buyer assist line. “I known as my financial institution to ask about my stability, however needed to discuss to a clanker as an alternative of a human.”
Groksucker
Whereas “clanker” is a slur geared toward bots and AI programs, a number of slurs have arisen to outline people who’re overly engaged with sure AI programs, significantly generative AI chatbots. Maybe probably the most visceral one on this class is “Groksucker” (you may determine for your self what different phrase the time period mimics).
The time period will get its title from Elon Musk’s xAI chatbot Grok. And Grok itself says the time period describes “individuals who continuously work together with me, Grok, in a manner some discover repetitive or annoying,” including that the time period is tied “to considerations about AI overuse or privateness on X.”
Whereas “Groksucker” is usually restricted to describing a subsection of Grok customers, one other time period exists for individuals who are overreliant on the preferred chatbot, ChatGPT. However extra on that beneath.
Slop
If there may be one time period that has change into synonymous with AI-generated content material, it’s “slop.”
Slop refers to low-quality, high-output content material generated by AI instruments which might be more and more overrunning our feeds. Slop is Shrimp Jesus proliferating on Fb and Instagram. Slop is YouTube movies with fully AI-generated scripts, photos, and thumbnails that crowd out high-quality human-made creators. Slop is articles written by a machine as an alternative of an individual. And slop is what’s inflicting the lifeless web concept to transition from fringe conspiracy to prophetic foresight.
Slop is in every single place now, and it’s solely going to worsen.
Sloppers
This record wouldn’t be full with out together with a slang time period that has not too long ago been adopted to explain people who find themselves overreliant on the world’s hottest AI chatbot, ChatGPT. That phrase is “sloppers.”
The slur gained reputation after a TikTok posted by consumer intrnetbf went viral final month. Within the video, the consumer stated his buddy got here up with the time period “sloppers” to explain “people who find themselves utilizing ChatGPT to do all the pieces for them.”
If somebody is a “slopper,” it implies that they’ve offloaded most of their cognitive processes to ChatGPT. This cognitive offloading includes asking ChatGPT for steering on numerous duties an individual must be mentally well-equipped to deal with on their very own, akin to planning what to do for the night, how to reply to a textual content message from a member of the family, or whether or not to make a big life change, like quitting a job.
Technological slurs can change how the general public viewds a product
Whereas many studying this will discover a number of the above AI slang humorous (and even becoming), the truth that these phrases are getting into the general public lexicon is more likely to alarm some corporations working within the AI area.
When the general public adopts new derogatory names for merchandise, applied sciences, and the individuals who use them, it often alerts that common notion isn’t heading in a optimistic course. This may set off a snowball impact, the place folks en masse reject the know-how. The “glasshole” backlash towards Google Glass is a well known instance of this.
Synthetic intelligence is, after all, a a lot bigger and extra transformative drive than Google Glass—and it’s unlikely to vanish regardless of the growing slurs directed at it. Nonetheless, this rising slang does point out—as YouGov’s polling additionally exhibits—that the general public is more and more cautious of the know-how, and isn’t afraid to voice it.
