AP's guidance to avoid anthropomorphizing AI in reporting draws 'woke' backlash from Nate Silver
fivefilters · reddit · 2026-09-27
The Associated Press' style guide tells journalists that AI systems do not think, feel, want, or understand, and to avoid anthropomorphizing language — instead explaining what a system does, how well it performs, who built it, and who could be affected.
The reasonable guidance drew backlash: Nate Silver, a statistician and writer with 3 million X followers, called the 'don't anthropomorphize AI' push 'very Woke 1.0'. The piece argues the backlash misses the point — AP is asking for accurate behavioral description, not ideology, and the spat shows the debate over whether models have minds has reached newsroom standards.
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