Trump Wants to Change the Term Artificial Intelligence While China Emphasizes Human Labor
While US President Trump wants to erase the perception of falseness in the term artificial intelligence, the term in China highlights human labor and potential.
US President Donald Trump wants to drop the word 'artificial' to emphasize the capabilities and opportunities of artificial intelligence technology, while long-standing terminology in China offers a different approach centered on humans.
Trump's Search for a New Term
US President Donald Trump wants to eliminate the perception of falseness in the word artificial intelligence, one of the world's most important technologies.
The White House states that this new terminology much better reflects the rapidly advancing capabilities and boundless opportunities of the technology.
The Human-Centric Meaning in China
The term rengong zhineng adopted by China for technology consists of the combination of the words ren, meaning human, and gong, meaning labor or craftsmanship.
According to Shuang Frost from Aarhus University, this expression translates literally as human-made intelligence and focuses on potential.
Linguistic Identity and Debates
An online commentary published in the People's Daily newspaper in March questioned the common English AI abbreviation in daily Chinese life.
While debates in the US focus on the limits of the English name, debates in China are shaped around identity in the face of transnational technological words.