Vocabulary for English Conversation on Artificial Intelligence (AI)

I know you've noticed the nonstop hype, excitement,

and panic over the topic of artificial intelligence or AI.

This past year, it's everywhere. In fact, recently,

AI scientist, Fei-Fei Li said,

"I would call this an inflection moment." An inflection moment is when

a significant change occurs. It's a turning point.

It describes a sudden noticeable or important change

in an industry. For example, of course, artificial intelligence isn't new.

In fact, the first time that term was used was in the 1950s,

and most of us use AI every day. For example,

if you use facial recognition to open your smartphone or if you use an

app to check your spelling and grammar before you click send on an email.

If you sometimes say, Hey,

Siri or Alexa for a voice prompt,

or if you click a Netflix recommendation based on your previous viewing.

These are all examples of AI in our everyday lives,

but what is new is how much we society

are talking about it now.

It's even a hot topic of conversation in my Confident Women

Community. Now, I am not an expert in the AI industry,

but what I can share with you is the vocabulary,

the words and phrases English speakers are using to discuss this topic

in conversations, in newspaper articles, on podcasts, and so on.

I want you to have the vocabulary you need to participate in these

conversations and to confidently contribute your thoughts,

your concerns,

your excitement as AI impacts your world.

That's exactly why I am sharing this lesson with you today and this Confident

English lesson.

You're going to learn the vocabulary being used now to have

conversations on the age and novelty of AI,

the pros of AI and its benefits,

the cons of AI and the fears we might have, and finally,

the role AI currently plays in our lives and its possible future.

Before we go any further, if this is your first time here, welcome.

I'm Annemarie, an English confidence and fluency coach.

Everything I do is designed to help you get the confidence you want for your

life and work in English.

If you'd love to get more free resources and lessons for me,

including additional lessons that help you have meaningful conversations in

English, you can find them all at my Speak Confident English website.

While you're there,

I recommend that you download my in-depth training called How to Get the

Confidence to Say What You Want In English. In that training,

I share with you my number one strategy for confidence and

fluency building to start this lesson.

I want to get clear on the precise definition of AI and

talk about why this lesson right now. So first,

what exactly is artificial intelligence?

If you've been afraid to ask that question out loud, you're not alone.

There are many people who keep hearing about AI,

but they're not really sure what that means. So here's exactly what it is.

Artificial intelligence is a technology developed to simulate or

imitate human intelligence through computer systems.

This refers to a machine's ability to perform cognitive

functions. These are the functions you might use for reasoning,

problem solving, learning something new,

or communicating with natural language. So why this lesson?

Right now? Without a doubt,

the advancement and conversations around AI are evolving

rapidly almost every day. It seems there's some new change, update,

or policy. Staying informed on this topic can help you adapt to changes,

make informed decisions,

and participate in conversations on the topic of AI.

Moreover,

knowing about AI allows you to better understand the

expanding vocabulary in the English language around this topic.

It also helps you to understand the shifts occurring in

English language culture as AI influences our present and

future.

I want you to have the vocabulary you need to speak to this issue,

and as the industry evolves, I'll add new lessons on this topic Accordingly,

as we continue through this lesson,

I'm going to use a very conversational approach and I'll be highlighting the key

vocabulary English speakers are using right now to talk about AI.

Specifically when we talk about the length of time AI has existed,

as well as why it feels so new right now.

All highlight language we use to talk about the pros of AI and the

potential benefits we might experience.

We'll talk about the cons and the fears we might have,

and I'll end with the role of AI in our current lives and possibly in the

future. So point number one. As I mentioned earlier,

AI isn't new.

It definitely feels new to many of us with all the buzz happening around this

topic, but as I highlighted,

this term was originally used in the 1950s.

Progress in this industry was slow until scientists greenlit

a new idea. Neural networks.

Let me pause here to talk about some of the vocabulary I just used to greenlight

something means to give permission to move forward or go ahead with

something, usually with a project.

A neural network is a mathematical system that learns

skills by finding statistical patterns in data,

and they're inspired by the connections between neurons in the human brain.

When scientists greenlit this new idea,

it gave way to systems such as Alexa, Siri,

and a more powerful version of Google Translate.

The next big shift came when tech companies began building large

language models.

These are neural networks that are trained on vast

amounts of internet texts and data such as

Wikipedia and blogs.

Let's talk a little bit more about what a language model is because this is a

term that is used often in conversations on ai.

To understand a language model,

we need to go back to understanding a neural network. Again,

a neural network is a mathematical system that learns skills by finding

statistical patterns in data.

A language model is a neural network that learns new skills

by analyzing texts from the internet.

Examples of this include predicting the next word in a pattern,

writing computer code,

having conversations and writing prose. Over time,

newer generations of artificial intelligence gobbled up information

and learned to perform more sophisticated tasks to gobble

up something means to use or eat it quickly.

These next generation AI models are what we now call

generative ai.

Generative AI is a technology that creates new content.

It can create content such as text images and computer code,

for example.

All of this comes from trained neural networks that have analyzed

information on the internet.

I think it's always helpful to have examples along with definitions.

So here are a few common examples of generative ai,

Alexa ChatGPT, Google Assistant, and Google Bard.

These technologies spit out responses to requests

or prompts for information to spit out a response means to quickly

produce an answer or a response. You might, for example,

enter a prompt into chatGPT asking for an overview on a recent

government policy or a book summary,

or the best way to grow a particular house plant and instantly receive a

response.

Other generative AI systems have been developed to specialize in a immersive

augmented reality experiences, database analysis and summarization,

mental health support, health diagnosis, and so much more.

Now that we have this general sense of where AI came from and some of the core

concepts,

let's move on to talking about the pros of AI and its possible

benefits, and again,

the most important part of what I want to share with you is the core vocabulary

you can use in talking about this with others.

If you're a big fan of artificial intelligence or you love talking about the

possible benefits,

here are the pros you might highlight and the language you would use in English

to do so. First,

AI already plays a pivotal role in our lives in how we work, create,

think, search, interact process, and more.

If something has a pivotal role in our lives,

it means that it has a critical or vitally important position,

whether it's at work, home, or school.

The use of AI fosters creativity by freeing up your mind space

or mental capacity, for example,

by making some of your tasks more efficient in accurate,

it frees up time for you to then focus on high level

creative thinking or strategic thinking. For example,

AI can help to provide a more accurate diagnosis in healthcare,

spark creative ideas in a meeting,

provide a tailored personalized learning plan for a student.

It can quickly analyze a vast amount of user feedback,

enhance safety and efficiency on roads, personalized marketing,

minimize human error, and more.

The meteoric rise of generative AI and its widespread

acceptance.

Speak to society's desire for a modern tool that allows us

to have more balance, efficiency and innovation.

If something has widespread acceptance,

it means there's a general agreement that something should be included or that

something is right. Now with all those benefits of AI,

there are definitely some potential drawbacks and reasonable fears.

Well, we're not sure if AI is going to overtake humanity.

In other words, become the most dominant form of intelligence on earth.

There are some cons we should address. At its extreme,

AI threatens to replace humans in the workforce.

That threat is a real concern, and at least in the short term,

while there are certainly tasks that can be delegated to ai,

it's more likely that employers will seek out job candidates

who have up to date AI skills.

As AI normalization continues, unfortunately,

this could result in forcing out those who struggle in

adapting to this changing environment.

In addition to the potential for job loss, AI isn't foolproof.

It occasionally produces what we call hallucinations.

A hallucination in this context is incorrect

information generated by AI but presented as fact,

and of course, this can be dangerous when information isn't fact checked.

This particular problem can occur when an AI entity is trained

on old limited low quality data,

and in the analysis of that old limited low quality data,

it generates what it considers to be an accurate response,

although that may not be the case. Moreover,

when someone requests information or enters a prompt that is

unclear, uses slang or idioms or isn't concise,

it can cause further confusion. In the end,

these hallucinations can perpetuate significant harm by spreading

disinformation to perpetuate means to make an undesired

situation or an unfounded belief continue in addition to the

threat to jobs and these hallucinations.

Another possible area of harm is the ability for AI to

impersonate individuals or create fake identities when instructed to do so,

to impersonate means to pretend to be another person,

whether it's out of a desire to entertain or to deceive,

this could create greater chances of identity theft and it blurs

the lines between right and wrong, real and fake.

In other words,

it can erode or destroy the confidence and credibility

in someone or something.

I talked briefly about the type of data fed to AI,

and I want to elaborate on that a bit.

There are concerns about where data comes from and copyright

infringement.

Copyright infringement occurs when content protected by

copyright is used without permission or when it violates the

rights granted. Now, with all of these pros and cons,

society is still at odds with the regulations that should

be put in place to be at odds with something means to be in conflict.

There isn't agreement on the policies or regulations that should be

implemented. As AI continues to evolve at lightning speed,

governments question whether current regulations are effective

in balancing the need for innovation and safeguarding

the public from harm now and in the future.

And that brings me to our fourth point that we're going to talk about today.

Along with the key vocabulary,

you need the current role of AI and its possible future.

As the world of AI continues to evolve,

so too does the conversation around ethical concerns.

An ethical concern is any circumstance in which a moral

conflict exists. In just this last year,

we've seen the rise of new tech empires and leaders in every field race

to embrace this technology. On top of that,

the introduction of ChatGPT to the mainstream has produced

new schools of thought and it continues to reshape our society as

we speak.

When something is introduced to the mainstream or accepted by the

mainstream, it means the ideas, attitudes,

and activities are perceived as normal or conventional at

this particular point in time.

There's no way for me to fully predict how

AI will influence our lives going forward. However,

what I can share is a mindset and the language I

hear many others using.

As we think about the best way to use AI in our lives right now,

we can harness its potential to improve quality of life,

particularly if we view AI as an extension or

a tool that enhances our abilities rather than

replacing our abilities to harness means to bring something

into control in order to have power or control over it. Now,

before we get to my practice question today,

because I do want you to have the opportunity to practice the vocabulary you've

learned and to share your thoughts on this topic,

I want to reiterate that I'm not an expert in the AI industry.

My goal here is entirely to give you the vocabulary you need to speak on this

topic and to share your thoughts on it.

If there's anything I got wrong in this lesson,

I welcome your comments and now here's my question for you.

What do you think about AI? What's your opinion on it?

Do you view it as primarily a positive with benefits that improve our lives,

or do you have some concerns about it? However you feel about it,

I invite you to share with me,

and I want you to try using two or three of the vocabulary words or

phrases you learned in this lesson today. As always,

the best place for you to do that is in the comments below.

If you'd like to also see this content in writing,

you can find it all at my Speak Confident English website.

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