We don't have the words yet

We're in a strange moment where AI can do remarkable things, but we can't agree on what to call any of it.

Every company invents new terms—agents, copilots, artifacts, connectors, tools, plugins. The jargon keeps piling up because we haven't figured out what this technology actually is yet.

We're like people in the 1990s saying "information superhighway" before everyone just said "online."

The real problem isn't the words themselves—it's that the concepts haven't settled. Is AI a tool, a collaborator, or something else entirely?

The answer changes depending on what you're doing with it. Eventually we'll land on a few simple terms that stick, the way "app" and "streaming" stuck.

But for now, we're fumbling in the dark, and it shows in how we talk about it.