because the goal here is to have a word that people skeptical of the “lifeyness” or “brainyness” of ai will accept to understand that it’s not normal software, I really like “moldware” and will be using it until something sticks better. it nicely describes the general nature of function approximators without getting into the weeds of why or how, or claiming function approximators have inherent lifeyness. it also feels like the right amount of decrease in “firmness” after software.
more candidates to reject from, a few favorite picks from asking an llm to dump many suggestions: fit-; contour-; match-; mirror-; conform-; mimic-; map-; cast-; imprint-;
Mold like fungus or mold like sculpt? I like this a bit, and I can imagine it might… grow on me. (yeuch)
Mold-as-in-sculpt has the benefit that it encompasses weirder stuff like prompt-wrangled and scaffolded stuff, and also kinda large-scale GOFAI-like things alla ‘MCTS’ and whatnot.
because the goal here is to have a word that people skeptical of the “lifeyness” or “brainyness” of ai will accept to understand that it’s not normal software, I really like “moldware” and will be using it until something sticks better. it nicely describes the general nature of function approximators without getting into the weeds of why or how, or claiming function approximators have inherent lifeyness. it also feels like the right amount of decrease in “firmness” after software.
more candidates to reject from, a few favorite picks from asking an llm to dump many suggestions: fit-; contour-; match-; mirror-; conform-; mimic-; map-; cast-; imprint-;
Mold like fungus or mold like sculpt? I like this a bit, and I can imagine it might… grow on me. (yeuch)
Mold-as-in-sculpt has the benefit that it encompasses weirder stuff like prompt-wrangled and scaffolded stuff, and also kinda large-scale GOFAI-like things alla ‘MCTS’ and whatnot.