---
title: "Miscellanea for 2025-07-23"
date: 2025-07-23T23:59:00-07:00
url: https://blog.lmorchard.com/2025/07/23/miscellanea/
author: Les Orchard
tags: [miscellanea]
---

# Miscellanea for 2025-07-23

- Hello world!
- I've been trying (and often failing) to be careful about my language around the current wave of LLM-powered tech that folks are calling "AI"
	- Like, the following things can all conceivably be called "snack chips":
		- Potato chips
		- Corn tortilla chips
		- Cheez-It® Original Snack Crackers
		- CHEETOS® Crunchy Cheese Flavored Snacks
		- [Banana chips](https://thehappierhomemaker.com/homemade-banana-chips/)
		- [Baked kale chips](https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/176957/baked-kale-chips/)
	- But, I'm sure most would agree that each of these things have significant differences between each other.
	- Just like a bunch of these things could be called "AI":
		- Video game NPC behavior
		- AlphaGo
		- Large language models
		- Movie & music recommendations
		- Self-driving cars
		- Weather forecasts
	- But, we should be able to agree that each of these things have significant differences. 
		- They also have significantly different means of production, appropriate applications, and defining characteristics that builders and operators need to know inside & out.
	- Just calling this stuff ✨AI✨ for the sake of simpler marketing does us all a disservice.
		- Especially when folks get it tangled up with fictional depictions like [Her (2013)](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1798709) and the [computer from the USS Enterprise](https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/USS_Enterprise_(NCC-1701)_computer).
		- That means the tech inherits a halo of expectations and enthusiasm that it hasn't necessarily earned.
		- And that obscures understanding of the real operating characteristics of the thing.
	- I feel like there's a longer blog post here, but I don't have the rest of it right this moment.