Welcome to the #AInthropocene

Inspired while reading Tressie McMillan Cottom’s 20 Dec 2022 NY Times post, “Human This Christmas“, I tweeted about the “AInthropocene”, which I thought would be an already existent portmanteau word that combines the idea of the Anthropocene geologic age with the “AI” abbreviation for artificial intelligence — putting the “AIn’t” in the Anthropocene if you will.

I was surprised not to find any significant public reference to what seems like an obvious term for a coming — or current? — age, and so I thought it might make sense to try to define it a bit.

In keeping with the current trend to engage with OpenAI’s ChatGPT tool as Tressie touches on in her post, I first turned to this language model to see what it might come up with around these ideas. To start, ChatGPT comes up with a couple of decent attempts at other portmanteaus to describe this situation:

Nate: Make a portmanteau word for a geologic age that combines the idea that both humans and artificial intelligence now shape the Earth and its ecosystems…

ChatGPT: One possibility could be the “humaitage,” combining the words “human” and “AI” to suggest a geologic age in which both humans and artificial intelligence have a significant impact on the Earth and its ecosystems. Another option could be the “intellihuman,” combining the words “intelligent” and “human” to suggest a geologic age in which human intelligence and technological intelligence have merged to shape the Earth and its ecosystems. Both of these portmanteau words could be used to describe a future geologic age in which humans and artificial intelligence coexist and collaborate to shape the Earth and its ecosystems in ways that were previously unimaginable.

I was wondering if ChatGPT might leap right to “AInthropocene” like I did, but no. I sorta like “humaitage”, tho it sorta seems like it might be hard to say fast. “Intellihuman” is less inspired. I admire ChatGPT for imagining a bucolic future where humans and AI “collaborate” to “shape the Earth” in what might be positive ways…an optimist!

Not satisfied, I nudged ChatGPT toward where I wanted it to go…

Nate: Would “AInthropocene” be a good portmanteau word for this age?

ChatGPT: “AInthropocene” could be a good portmanteau word for a geologic age in which both humans and artificial intelligence shape the Earth and its ecosystems. The word combines the elements “AI” (referring to artificial intelligence) and “Anthropocene” (which is a term used to describe the current geological age, in which human activities have had a significant impact on the Earth’s ecosystems). By combining these two elements, “AInthropocene” suggests a geologic age in which both humans and artificial intelligence have a role in shaping the Earth and its ecosystems. This portmanteau word could be used to describe a future geologic age in which humans and artificial intelligence coexist and collaborate to shape the Earth and its ecosystems in ways that were previously unimaginable.

Predictably, ChatGPT has created a decent “neutral” definition of the AInthropocene: “A future geologic age in which humans and artificial intelligence coexist and collaborate to shape the Earth and its ecosystems in ways that were previously unimaginable.” Although I think there are some SciFi and fantasy creators who might beg to differ on whether such an age has so far been unimaginable…

With less rosy-tinted glasses on, my second take on “AInthropocene” focused on how its first four letters spell “ain’t” — which leads me to an alternate formulation “AIN’Thropocene”, which we might define as something like “protest against activities that could lead to a future geologic age in which humans and artificial intelligence combine to shape the Earth and its ecosystems into an unlivable hellscape”.

I’d love to hear other definitions for AInthropocene/AIN’Thropocene! Add yours to comments below or share them on social media like Twitter or Mastodon with a #AInthropocene hashtag.

2 thoughts on “Welcome to the #AInthropocene”

  1. Nicely played. If anything is impressive about this chap er ChatGPT is it rarely balks, it always seems to take what looks like a decent swing at what is pitched, but often seems whiff wildly.

    I would tossin something like the AInthropomoronosphere for both many of the moronic responses (it will be the end of essay writing! It’s going to take our jobs!) and what I find is the moronic flavor of how it writes.

    You see it never strays too wildly away from a narrow response, like it’s brain is severely limited to statistical mean, nor does it reach for metaphors or other injections of what a human writer draws from personal experience.

    It has this annoying bit of repetition of the same phrases like ”shaping the Earth and its ecosystems” and “ humans and artificial intelligence coexist” that I would mark off for not writing with a more varied word choice. It may get better in time, but the voice sounds moronic/robotic to me (would a bot even make up its own phrasing like that?)

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    • I like “AInthropomoronosphere”! Let’s see how many ideas we can pack into these terms and then we’ll see if ChatGPT can reverse engineer them to tell us what they mean…

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