Tech firms avoided the term AI due to dystopian sci-fi connotations

Evidence

In the early 2020s, artificial intelligence emerged as the next major frontier in consumer technology, following the mobile revolution and the rise of social media. Companies like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft had quietly been refining AI tools for enterprise and medical applications throughout the 2010s. During this time, tech companies treaded carefully with the term “artificial intelligence” because of its connotations of sci-fi dystopias, from the evil Skynet in Terminator to the malevolent robots of The Matrix. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 690

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the general history of how tech marketing rebrands to dodge negative framing. — connects to: IBM rebranded AI as cognitive computing to avoid connotations of inscrutable machine power — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 657