AI named word of the year

AI, the abbreviation for

artificial intelligence

, has been chosen as the

Word of the Year

2023 by

Collins Dictionary

. The dictionary defines

AI

as the “modelling of human mental functions by computer programs.”
Alex Beecroft

, the director of Collins Dictionary, told BBC that AI has been the most talked-about topic of 2023. “We know that AI has been a big focus this year in the way that it has developed and has quickly become as ubiquitous and embedded in our lives as email, streaming or any other once futuristic, now everyday technology,” he added.
According to Collins, their team of language experts analysed the Collins Corpus, which is a vast database consisting of over 20 billion words.

The database incorporates written material from various sources, including websites, newspapers, magazines, and books published worldwide.
The team also gathered spoken material from radio, television, and everyday conversations. To ensure the Collins dictionary remains up-to-date, new data is added to the Corpus every month. This helps the dictionary’s editors to identify new words and their meanings from the moment they are first used.

“AI’s selection as the word of the year by Collins Dictionary reflects the profound impact of artificial intelligence on our rapidly evolving world, where innovation and transformation are driven by the power of algorithms and data,” said OpenAI, the company behind the AI chatbot

ChatGPT

.
Since OpenAI released ChatGPT to the public in November 2022, artificial intelligence has been a hot topic. Following this, every major tech company has been racing to capitalise on the trend. Now, there are several other AI chatbots, including Google’s Bard, and the company is pouring billions into advancing its artificial intelligence. Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has also been riding the AI bandwagon, releasing its own language models and integrating them into its apps and services. Not just them, but whatever new service or product comes out has somehow AI in it.

You must have heard that possibilities are endless with AI, and the government wants to keep the artificial intelligence so things do not end up like

Ex Machina

. US President Joe Biden signed the first executive order on AI, and other nations have also proposed laws to safeguard users from AI. Meanwhile, the UK is hosting the first AI Safety Summit, which will see over 100 world leaders, tech CEOS, and AI researchers discussing how to best utilise the potential of AI while minimising the risks.