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Comment by simonw | Hacker News Reader

Where did you get the idea that your definition there is the "normal" definition of agent, especially in the context of AI?

I ask because you seem very confident in it - and my biggest frustration about the term "agent" is that so many people are confident that their personal definition is clearly the one everyone else should be using.

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Didn't he mention it was the court's definition?

But I'm not sure if that's true. The court didn't define anything, in contrary they only said that (in simplified terms) the chatbot was part of the website and it's reasonable to expect the info on their website to be accurate.

The closest I could find to the chatbot being considered an agent in legal terms (an entity like an employee) is this:

> Air Canada argues it cannot be held liable for information provided by one of its agents, servants, or representatives – including a chatbot.

Source: https://www.canlii.org/en/bc/bccrt/doc/2024/2024bccrt149/202...

I searched for the definition of "agent" and none of the results map to the way AI folks are using the word. It's really that simple, because we're marketing this stuff to non-tech people who already use words to mean things.

If we're redefining common words to market this stuff to non-tech people, and then we're conveniently not telling them that we redefined words, and thus allowing them to believe implicit falsehoods about the product that have serious consequences, we're being disingenuous.

Defining "agent" as "thing with agency" seems legitimate to me, what with them being the same word.

That logic doesn't work for me, because many words have multiple meanings. "Agency" can also be a noun that means an organization that you hire - like a design agency. Or it can mean the CIA.

I'm not saying it's not a valid definition of the term, I'm pushing back on the idea that it's THE single correct definition of the term.

May I push back on the idea that a single word may mean (completely) different things?

What's the single, unambiguous definition of the word "cleave"?

Aloha! Indeed, the language is being cleaved by such oversights. You can be in charge of overlooking this issue, effective ahead of two weeks from now. We'll peruse your results and impassionately sanction anything you call out (at least when it's unravelable). This endeavor should prove invaluable. Aloha!

It's pretty clearly true.

Bank: financial institution, edge of a river, verb to stash something away

Spring: a season, a metal coil, verb to jump

Match: verb to match things together, noun a thing to start fires, noun a competition between two teams

Bat: flying mammal, stick for hitting things

And so on.

You're pushing up against the english language, then. 'let' has 46 entries in the dictionary (more if you cinsider obsolete usages).

Anything involving real agents likely does get your local spymaster interested. I assume all good AI work attracts the three letter types to make sure that the researcher isn’t trying to make AI that can make bioweapons…

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