The Collins Dictionary Word of the Year – “AI”: Role in Shaping the Modern World

PWOnlyIAS November 02, 2023 05:23 2642 0

Context: AI, the abbreviation of Artificial Intelligence has been declared by Collins Dictionary Word of the Year for 2023.

The Collins Dictionary Word of the Year – “AI”: Role in Shaping the Modern World

Collins Dictionary Word of the Year 2023: Unveiling the Term Shaping Cultural Discourse

  • Collins Dictionary Word of the Year 2023 Award: The declaration was made by lexicographers at Collins Dictionary, after they observed a significant increase in the usage of this term.
  • Choosing the Word: The word was chosen after analyzing the Collins Corpus, a database containing over 20 billion words from written materials, including websites, newspapers, magazines, and books published worldwide. 
    • It also considered spoken language from radio, TV, and everyday conversations.
  • Other Noteworthy Words:
    • Nepo Baby: A phrase that is used to describe children of celebrities who have succeeded in industries similar to those of their parents.
    • Greedflation: It refers to companies making profits during the cost of living crisis.
    • Permacrisis: It refers to an extended period of instability and insecurity, which was the Collins Word of the Year in 2022.
    • Deinfluencing: It is an act of warning social media followers to avoid certain products or lifestyle choices.

What is Artificial Intelligence? – Collins Dictionary Word of the Year

  • Artificial Intelligence is a segment of Computer Science that has the potential to perform tasks commonly associated with human cognitive functions. It allows computers to learn and solve problems like humans.
    • These functions include interpreting speech, playing games, identifying patterns, generating arts etc.
  • Transformative Applications of AI: Revolutionizing Industries and Enhancing Lives
    • Healthcare: Artificial Intelligence can help provide personalized medicine and X-ray readings. It can analyze reports in a better way and make accurate diagnoses.
    • Robotics: Artificial Intelligence can help robots learn the processes and perform the tasks with complete autonomy, without any human intervention.
    • Transport: Driverless vehicles have been developed as a part of Artificial Intelligence (AI). 
    • Banking and finance: Artificial Intelligence bots, digital payment advisers and biometric fraud detection are some of the applications of AI in banking and finance.
    • Security: AI facial recognition tools may be used for surveillance and security purposes to identify criminals.
    • Agriculture: Artificial Intelligence can analyze the crop health by looking at images of crops and suggesting appropriate amounts of fertilizers and water. It can also predict yields.
    • E-commerce and social media: AI can provide personalized content to users based on their previous usage pattern. Apart from targeted sales, AI also helps in targeted advertising.
    • Education: Artificial Intelligence can be used to develop educational content, which could convey knowledge in an effective way.

Challenges and Risks of AI: Navigating Security, Ethics, and Socio-Economic Implications

  • Security Threats: Artificial Intelligence can be used to assist criminals in launching cyberattacks or help terrorists in planning chemical attacks.
  • Environmental Concerns: To operate Artificial Intelligence, it needs a lot of electricity. Going by the numbers, excessive use of Artificial Intelligence can lead to increase in global warming as well as carbon footprint.
  • Loss of Jobs: Artificial Intelligence has the potential to replace the equivalent of 300 million full-time jobs across the globe in the near future.
  • Data Privacy: Artificial Intelligence systems need access to large amounts of data sets to train effectively. This raises concerns about data privacy and potential misuse of the same. 
  • Data Poisoning: It refers to inaccurate or biased outcomes based on input data manipulation. Criminals can insert malicious data into an Artificial Intelligence system’s training to compromise its performance. 
  • Ethical Concerns: AI can lead to decisions that are susceptible to inaccuracies, discriminatory outcomes, embedded or inserted bias.
  • Oxford Dictionary Word of the Year:
    • The Oxford English Dictionary has chosen ‘Goblin mode’ as the word of the year 2022.
    • According to the dictionary, “goblin mode”, is a slang term for “unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy” behavior.
  • Merriam-Webster Dictionary Word of the Year:
    • Gaslighting’ has been chosen by Merriam-Webster dictionary as the word of the year for 2022.
    • The dictionary defines ‘gaslighting’ as the act or practice of grossly misleading someone especially for one’s own advantage.”
  • Cambridge Dictionary Word of the Year:
    • “Homer” was chosen by the Cambridge Dictionary as the word of the year for 2022. It was inspired by Wordle.
    • “Homer ” is not a reference to the Greek poet and author, or a character from Simpson, but refers to an informal American English word for a ‘home run’ in baseball.

Conclusion:

Choosing the word AI as the Word of the Year for 2023 by Collins Dictionary reflects the profound impact of artificial intelligence on our rapidly evolving world.

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Collins Dictionary Word of the Year FAQs

The Collins Dictionary Word of the Year for 2023 is AI, the abbreviation of Artificial Intelligence.

The word was chosen after analyzing the Collins Corpus, a database containing over 20 billion words from written materials, including websites, newspapers, magazines, and books published worldwide. It also considered spoken language from radio, TV, and everyday conversations.

Artificial Intelligence is a segment of Computer Science that is responsible for performing tasks commonly associated with human cognitive functions. It allows computers to learn and solve problems like humans.

Major functions of Artificial Intelligence include interpreting speech, playing games, identifying patterns, generating arts etc.

AI can cause security threats, environmental concerns, privacy issues, loss of jobs etc in the near future.
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