alt Hacker NewsThis is pedantic but that's not proper usage of 'shibboleth.' The basic conceit of an 'AI booster' is easily defined by the word 'booster' itself - it's someone who 'boosts' AI, likely without much actual subject matter expertise on the matter and the word 'booster' has a long etymology applied to various ideas: https://www.etymonline.com/word/booster
When most theorists talk about shibboleths and impenetrable academic writing, it's in reference to terms like 'deterritorialization' or 'intertextuality' which are not immediately evident to most lay people who aren't armed with an etymological background or who once stumbled into an advanced course on literary theory in pursuit of a creative writing degree
You could probably say that there's cultural capital associated with it but that's true of nearly any term describing an ideology or opinion. The very same AI boosters are guilty of coining things like 'orthogonality' or 'instrumentally convergent subgoals' which lean more towards being unnecessarily bombastic than descriptive (I guess 'intelligent but amoral' and 'self-preservation' aren't fancy enough for adoption) which loses the strongest argument for academic jargon like the one advanced by Butler: https://web.archive.org/web/20240630040227/https://www.nytim...
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> This is pedantic but that's not proper usage of 'shibboleth.' The basic conceit of an 'AI booster' is easily defined by the word 'booster' itself - it's someone who 'boosts' AI,
It’s a shibboleth because it’s a highly specific phrase used by these people.
The fact that it’s self-explanatory doesn’t take away from that.
It’s a shibboleth in the way it’s used. I see the word “booster” applied more to AI than any other topic because it’s the shibboleth chosen to represent that specific set of ideologies about AI.
To me it seems like a term that users pessimistic about AI and the future apply to those with an optimistic opinion.
By speaking of boosting, they add an implication that the opinion isn't as genuine as their own and is perhaps motivated by some sort of financial benefit.
Am I wrong?