ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: The American Sign Language (ASL) sign for "artificial intelligence"
If context is established you can just spell "AI" (ai) to mean artificial
intelligence.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: Version 1: Spell "AI"
Artificial Intelligence: Version 2: Spell it out.
Artificial Intelligence: Recognize that someone might use the signs
that are sometimes labeled as:
FALSE, fake, (and related concepts)
and
SMART, intelligence, (and related concepts)
See my notes below.
Notes:
Update:
Edit: I'm going to add here that I think societies go through a transitory phase
regarding terms that enter the public consciousness wherein during the
transition members of a society will use longer terms (words, phrases, signs)
that after the transition will seem wrong or inappropriate. For example,
"electronic mail" seems terribly wrong (now) but for a year or so that was how
English users referred to email.
Similarly, I think there will come a time when using anything other than just
spelling "AI" (in ASL) will feel "wrong" when referring to artificial
intelligence in general conversation. (For most of us we are already
there.)
However, for what it is worth when we see older videos from the transitory phase
we will see signs like FAKE SMART.
If Deaf want to sign FALSE SMART to mean artificial intelligence we are
certainly welcome to do so. I've encouraged this group again and again to lean
away from semantic restriction (which is a fancy way of saying let's not decide
that signs can't mean things."
Bee Vicars occasionally discusses "linguistic gatekeeping" and encourages us to
not close the gate on various types of language use because communication is
precious and vital.
We live in a community where (some) people constantly tell others "you can't
sign that because... (insert any reason here but usually because the signing
somehow looks like English). Gatekeeping at the expense of communication leads
to language deprivation. (That's a bad thing folks.)
An associate of mine, Tracy Stine, (Deaf, ASL teacher, Deaf Culture guru) shared
an example regarding the term "baby shower." Some fluent signers sign
BABY+SHOWER to refer to a "baby shower" -- even though there typically is no
"showering" going on at a baby shower.
My point is that just as it is okay to semantically expand the sign "shower" to
refer to "party" -- there is no reason why the Deaf Community (not any one
particular individual but all of us collectively) can't decide to go ahead and
sign FAKE SMART to map to "artificial intelligence." Since that sentence used a
double negative, let me be clear: The Deaf community can decide to sign whatever
the Deaf community wants to sign.
Unfortunately we "do" live in a world full of prescriptivists (people who
feel they need to prescribe or decide for others) and gatekeepers (who feel it
is their job to open or close the gate on what signs can and can't mean and how
signs can and can't be used).
It is sort of funny / sad. The same people that will criticize FALSE SMART as
being "signed English" are are likely to tell you to sign "AI" which is somehow
in their mind "less English" despite mapping precisely and directly to the first
letters of the English words "artificial" and "intelligence.
To be clear, yes, indeed -- as of the early 2020s do spell "AI" to refer to
artificial intelligence. Also if needed for clarity go ahead and spell out the
words "artificial intelligence" during the introduction phase of the topic
during your conversation or lecture -- but let's all remember that just spelling
something to a person (Hearing or Deaf) who is illiterate may not actually
accomplish much and you might end up needing to use signs to describe AI
regardless of how fast you can spell out the words. Also consider that the
fastest way to map the "A" and the "I" to "artificial intelligence" for someone
who doesn't read English might just be to sign FALSE while mouthing artificial
and sign SMART while mouthing intelligence.
Notice I used the word "might." It all depends on your conversation partner or
audience.
Life and language are situational so please don't go running around reducing
this discussion to simply claiming that Bill says the way to sign "artificial
intelligence" is to sign FAKE SMART.
No, I'm not telling you to sign FAKE SMART. I am tell you that you should
recognize it if someone else signs it.
Do not throw away my context and the other ways I mentioned -- including to
spell "AI" and to spell out the words.
I'm also not asking any of you to agree with me.
I do however encourage you to understand the points I'm making (even if you
disagree).
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