And Betty, When You Call Me, You Can Call Me Ai

Stephen Fry, the British actor and comedian and all-around logophile, has a wonderful newsletter.

And recently he was commenting on artificial intelligence. And I loved what he said. Let me just share a little snippet from it. He wrote, you may have noticed that I render artificial intelligence as capital A small I, not capital A capital I throughout this piece. This is my fruitless, no doubt, attempt to make life easier for people called Albert, Alfred, Alexander et al.

Ho, ho. And then he says in sans serif fonts, a I with a majuscule I is ambiguous. How does the great Pacino feel when he reads that Al is a threat to humanity? So let’s all write AI as capital A, small I.

And Grant, I love that idea. I have a friend named Al, and whenever I text to or about him, it looks like I’m saying AI. Yeah, I have a great friend named Al, and the joke never dies. But also, capital A, lowercase i, kind of looks like a scream of terror. So if you’re an AI, alarm us. It kind of is appropriate. It is appropriate.

So seriously, I really like this as an innovation. I think maybe the train’s already left the station, but I like the idea.

Yeah, Stephen Fry always like 10 chess moves ahead of the rest of us.

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