In Scrabble (at least the latest British version) you are allowed “Ai”, a pale-throated sloth in tropical rainforests. As I play this, in a game with my mum and dad, my dad studiously and proudly translates this to “artificial intelligence”.
Artificial intelligence is now the first thing these letters conjure, but how fitting that an “ai” should be a solitary, herbivorous sloth. Firstly because this is exactly what AI will destroy, razing the careful, commensal rainforests in which it dwells with gigantic data centres. And, secondly, because this will provide the nutrient to the sloth’s psychic counterpart among humans, the deadly sin that tech bros are trying to exploit. Tech bros, namely, want to be like how they imagine the sloth – lazy, dependent.
Squidditas 