AI Ethics Has Stopped Arguing About AI

The terminological retreat is happening on both sides of the accountability gap simultaneously, and that symmetry is what makes it consequential. Ethics practitioners have broadened their scope until 'AI' is just one concern among many — environment, labor, colonialism, grief — while lab leadership has narrowed the definition of AI capability until no single term captures what they are building. The result is that the institutions meant to govern AI and the institutions building it have both made the same rhetorical move: replace a precise, contestable claim with something ambient…