How did 'Hallucinate' become Dictionary.com's word of the Year?
Technology
The pick underscores how artificial intelligence seeped into mainstream consciousness in 2023
(Web Desk) - Dictionary.com on Tuesday named “hallucinate” its word of the year, a reference to the so-called hallucinations that some AI programmes like OpenAI’s ChatGPT experience when they crawl the web and spit out incorrect or fabricated information.
How’d Dictionary.com make the decision? “By April, it was very clear that AI was going to be one of the stories of the year,” said Grant Barrett, head of lexicography at Dictionary.com, who coordinated the selection through a company Slack channel.
“And the fact that it left the technology realm and entered the everyday realm where middle school students were using it to write papers or it showed up in every app whether it needed to be there or not.”
Barrett’s not wrong. 2023 certainly has been a year defined by AI, with nearly every major Silicon Valley firm rushing to roll out products and a remarkable corporate drama unfolding at the industry’s most valuable startup, OpenAI.
Dictionary.com’s pick follows a similar choice by Merriam-Webster, which selected “authentic” as its word of the year, a nod to the online disinformation and inauthenticity that AI has accelerated.
When asked why Dictionary.com choose hallucinate rather than fabrication, Barrett said it came down to human nature: People have a tendency to anthropomorphize, thus a uniquely human term applied to a robot.
“We're not hallucinating on LSD,” said Barrett. “We're hallucinating on technology.”
