In Shakespeare's play, Juliet tells Romeo that names do not matter. What we call a rose, she says in essence, would smell just as sweet under another name.
For roses, she is right. For technologies, it is far less certain.
This week, the White House decided that artificial intelligence would henceforth be called "superintelligence" in official documents. Nothing changes in what these systems do, the decree itself acknowledges as much. So why bother?
The words that soften
We live surrounded by names chosen to make us see things in a certain way.
We talk about the "cloud" to refer to the place where our data is stored. The word evokes something light, airy, almost immaterial. In reality, these are vast warehouses filled with machines, consuming as much electricity as entire cities, as we reported on data centres leaving the grid.
We talk about a "redundancy programme" to announce job cuts. About "collateral damage" for civilian casualties. Each time, the word does not quite lie. It simply illuminates one part of the thing and leaves the rest in shadow.
The words that inflate
"Superintelligence" does the opposite: it does not soften, it inflates.
The word promises an intelligence superior to our own. It inspires admiration, a little fear, and above all a form of respect. It is difficult to oppose something called "super". It is easier to demand rules for an "artificial" tool.
A name does not change a technology. But it changes what we are prepared to grant it.
The expression did not fall from the sky. It was chosen in 1955 by the American researcher John McCarthy, for the title of a research project that would bring together, the following summer at Dartmouth College, the pioneers of the discipline. He wanted a new name, one that would distinguish the project from existing currents. Seventy years later, the word "intelligence" continues to shape the entire debate: it pushes us to compare these systems to ourselves, instead of judging them for what they do.
The names that help us think
One should not conclude from this that every change of name is manipulation.
A good word can also illuminate. When people began talking about "harassment" rather than "teasing", they made visible a suffering that the old word concealed. A more accurate name sometimes allows us to see what we could not see.
The whole question, then, is which direction the new word is heading in. Towards greater precision, or towards greater effect?
The test to apply
The next time something changes its name, ask yourself a single question: apart from the word, what has changed?
If the answer is "nothing", the new name does not tell you about the thing. It tells you about what someone would like you to think of it.
What we take away
Juliet's rose smelled just as sweet under another name. A technology, however, does not change when it is renamed.
But the name we give it often decides what we accept from it. That is why words are worth fighting for.