How artificial intelligence transformed the English language in 2023

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

While the year 2023 will be remembered for a lot of things, the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on our lives will rank pretty near the top. But AI hasn’t just transformed the way we shop or how we conduct research (ChatGPT, anyone?), it’s also crept its way into our language, a reality highlighted by popular dictionaries’ words of the year.

Indeed, Cambridge Dictionary chose “hallucinate” as its word of the year, adding a new definition born from how some AI tools use false, misleading or even made-up ‘facts’.

The new, additional definition reads: 'When an artificial intelligence (= a computer system that has some of the qualities that the human brain has, such as the ability to produce language in a way that seems human) hallucinates, it produces false information.'

Wendalyn Nichols, Cambridge Dictionary’s Publishing Manager, said: “The fact that AIs can ‘hallucinate’ reminds us that humans still need to bring their critical thinking skills to the use of these tools. AIs are fantastic at churning through huge amounts of data to extract specific information and consolidate it. But the more original you ask them to be, the likelier they are to go astray.

“At their best, large language models can only be as reliable as their training data. Human expertise is arguably more important – and sought after – than ever, to create the authoritative and up-to-date information that LLMs can be trained on.”

Meanwhile, Merriam-Webster opted for ‘authentic’, stating: “With the rise of artificial intelligence—and its impact on deepfake videos, actors’ contracts, academic honesty, and a vast number of other topics—the line between “real” and “fake” has become increasingly blurred”.

Finally, while Oxford chose 'rizz' as its word of the year, another AI-related term came runner-up: ‘prompt’. Oxford’s newly added definition of ‘prompt’ reads: ‘an instruction given to an artificial intelligence program, algorithm, etc., which determines or influences the content it generates’.

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