In Praise of Extruding AI

Emily Bender and Alex Hanna have performed a huge public service by writing The AI Con, The book is insightful, incisive, and totally accessible. You need to read it, and then you need to give a copy to your uncle or boss or favorite think tank honcho who thinks that AI is magical and can Do Things.

Among their many well-made points, Bender and Hanna solve a very specific problem.

One of the most insidious pieces of the AI marketing blitz (including the term "artificial intelligence," which is itself more marketing tool than accurate descriptor) is the way we keep anthropormorphizing it, talking about it as if it's a living, thinking thing.

It's hard to avoid. When we talk about AI producing strings of words, we frequently resort to terms like "wcomposing" or "creating" or "telling" or "writing," which are all handy for talking about the process of arranging words in a meaningful way. But these terms are inextricably connec ted to human intelligence. There really isn't a term to use in talking about the manufacture of meaningful strings of words with no intelligence behind the act. (Even Capote's famous slam, "That's not writing, that's typing" only comes close, because people type).

But Bender and hanna, who throw a variety of careful language at AI, hit on one that is an apt substitute for synthetic word string production-- extrude.

It's a genius choice because there is nothing human about it. There are no circumstances under which a real live human extrudes anything. It's strictly a machine function. The machine extrudes soft plastic into a mold and shapes it. The playdoh fun factory extrudes some dough to be cut into shapes for some reason. The machine extrudes pink slime waiting to be turned into some simulated version of food. The machine extrudes a sentence or paragraph of words to manufacture an artificial simulcrum of language.

Language is still catching up with AI, which does not read or analyze or interpret or summarize or write or tell no matter how many times we say it does. Better to reach for language that more accurately describes what the machine does. It's not easy and not yet automatic, but I do believe that more precise and accurate language is always important (and misleading and inaccurate language in the service of a massive bullshit generator is always dangerous). 

I've been reluctant to use extrude more often because it feels like theft, so this post is about assuaging my conscience so that I can borrow from Bender and Hanna with a clearer conscience and acknowledge their contribution to the discourse-- exactly the kind of contribution that GenAI is never going to make.