Word Of The Year 2023

 

The word of the year 2023

Wait for it.

Drum roll

Is hallucinate.

I’ve only hallucinated once in my life when on very strong pain killers. I thought aliens were on my curtains and that my gym bag had given birth to puppies.

Weird but better than the pain.

But this word of the year hallucinate is not really that kind of hallucinate, the kind as described here....

“hal·lu·cin·ate, [həˈluːsɪneɪt], VERB

hallucinate (verb) · hallucinates (third person present) · hallucinated (past tense) · hallucinated (past participle) · hallucinating (present participle)

experience an apparent sensory perception of something that is not actually present:

"Ben began hallucinating and having fits"

experience a hallucination of (something):

"I don't care if they're hallucinating purple snakes" · "he starts hallucinating that he is Jesus"

 

                                              

This meaning has more to do with data.  And the difference in the reality of humanity and technology getting on very well, with the machines enhancing our lives, and what is really going on, i.e... it’s not that good at all.  It’s still all a bit messy.

There’s no doubt that tech is good stuff. Families like ours with a nasty cancer gene are very grateful   for the computer that looks at our DNA and sorts out a protocol that is raised whenever we see a GP. This saves lives and money. Things are picked up so quickly.  Not sure what that genetic testing means in a county with no NHS?  Do the insurance companies increase the premium? Do people just avoid being tested?  Does free at source health care pick up the slack?

 

On the bad side of ‘tech’, the stress caused by scenes of violence being constantly replayed on social media, often without warning (two seconds of it and it’s in the head of the viewer forever) can lead to extra harmful sensitization of parts of the brain. Folk get twitchy and very anxious to such as extent it can become the norm for them to the detriment of their mental health.

 A recent study showed that those who experience an event ‘live’ actually process it better than those who witness the same incident online, then again on the news, and again and again. And I can understand that. Being present, there’s the awfulness of it, the shock, then the intellectual processing, you see the recovery, authorities taking over.  Maybe being there, at the time, you did what you could. There’s a sense of containment, the brain acknowledges the horror, then the outcome, and hopefully some kind of emotional line is drawn underneath it.

Until it is forced into the consciousness again and again by the media,

Have you heard a few folk say, with the events in the middle east, that they can’t watch the news anymore.  The filter should always be with the viewer, we all have our own level of ‘acceptance’.

According to Dictionary.com the word hallucinate is the single word that represents what AI is doing to us, our language and our way of life.

And does it also describe what we as writers, are sleepwalking into?

The definition of it with regard to AI is “to produce false information contrary to the intent of the user and present it as if true and factual.”

It also seems to be the stance of our government at the moment.

But the real issue is when the wee chatbots chappies hallucinate, they churn out facts they have pulled together as a statement of truth when that truth is really just fabrication.

Often well argued, reasoned fabrication but still a statement that has no real basis in truth.

Other front runners for the word of the year were included strike, Rizz *, wokeism, indicted, wildfire.

*“attractiveness, charm, or skill in flirtation that allows one to easily attract romantic partners. It is thought to be taken from the middle part of the word charisma.”

 Now you know.