alt Hacker News> 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.
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I feel like you are trying to paint it as a shibboleth because you feel targeted by it or you dislike the ideology of people who use it but it's probably just a banal reaction to the "doomer" adjective that I have heard before it and is even more entrenched
It just makes sense that the bigger the agora in which a debate takes place, the more nuances will fade away until you can roughly sort people into the "X bad" and "X good" buckets. Is it desirable ? I don't know. Is it some group's lobbying/conspiracy ? I don't think so
> 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.
It's not a shibboleth because "AI booster" is a fairly straightforward label to describe a group of people with certain characteristic. Which is proven because as I wrote "AI booster" above, mentally I was trying coin a descriptive label rather than use a predefined stock term. Personally, I have no fixed label for that group, and could have just as easily written "AI enthusiast" or "AI promoter."
IIRC, a shibboleth is a characteristic word or pronunciation that gives you away, often without you even realizing it. Understanding that there are people who support AI and others who oppose AI, and trying to refer to those groups, is not that.