AI Discourse
Metaphors actively shaping how people build, regulate, and understand artificial intelligence systems. Unlike historical metaphor domains where the framing has settled, AI discourse metaphors are being contested in real time — “tool” versus “agent” versus “oracle” carry different political and design implications. This category tracks metaphors where the choice of source domain is itself a consequential act.
Entries (49)
- Agent Swarm metaphor
- AI Alignment Is Training an Animal metaphor
- AI Hallucination Is Perception Disorder metaphor
- AI Is a Black Box metaphor
- AI Is a Copilot metaphor
- AI Is a Magnifying Glass metaphor
- AI Is a Mirror metaphor
- AI Is a Pair Programmer metaphor
- AI Is a Prosthesis metaphor
- AI Is a Spell Checker metaphor
- AI Is a Tool metaphor
- AI Is an Agent metaphor
- AI Is an Iceberg metaphor
- AI Is an Intern metaphor
- AI Is an Oracle metaphor
- AI Safety Is Containment metaphor
- Alignment Is Physical Alignment metaphor
- Bicycle for the Mind metaphor
- Chain of Thought Is Self-Talk metaphor
- Compute Is a Resource metaphor
- Context Window Is Working Memory metaphor
- Data Is Fuel metaphor
- Fine-Tuning Is Specialization metaphor
- Foundation Model Is a Foundation metaphor
- Frankenstein archetype
- Gas Town archetype
- Golem metaphor
- Guardrails metaphor
- Hive Mind Is Collective Intelligence metaphor
- Jailbreaking metaphor
- Lethal Trifecta paradigm
- Model Outputs Are Prophecies metaphor
- Neural Network Is a Brain metaphor
- Paperclip Maximizer Is Alignment Failure mental-model
- Production Data Is Food metaphor
- Prompt Engineering Is Programming metaphor
- Prompt Injection metaphor
- Ralph Wiggum Loop archetype
- Replicant Is Artificial Person metaphor
- Robot Is Artificial Worker metaphor
- Skynet Is AI Apocalypse metaphor
- Technology Is a Dark Mirror metaphor
- Temperature Is Creativity metaphor
- The Internet Is a Mine metaphor
- Tool Use Is Physical Manipulation metaphor
- Training Is Education metaphor
- Tricorder Is Universal Sensor metaphor
- Uploading Is Digital Immortality metaphor
- Weights Are Knowledge metaphor