The Royal Spanish Academy chose the "word of the year": what is it and why was it the winner

The Urgent Spanish Foundation (FundéuRAE), promoted by the Royal Spanish Academy and the EFE Agency, chose the 2022 “word of the year”: it is artificial intelligence, an expression that the dictionary defines as the discipline that is responsible for creating computer programs that execute orders similar to those of the human brain.

The choice arose from the massive circulation that this concept had in recent times, derived not only from its specific scope but also from the ethical dilemmas that its application generates.

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The initiative by the institution that regulates and legislates the use of the Spanish language adds to the similar competitions that in recent weeks have also been carried out by different dictionaries in the Saxon language, such as the Oxford or the Collins. These institutions leaned towards expressions such as goblin mode, permacrisis, Ukrainian, inflation and gaslighting. Like them, Artificial intelligence is revealing of phenomena that define the spirit of the age.

In its ruling released today, the FundéuRAE maintains that this concept was incorporated into the Academy's dictionary in its 1992 edition and has been selected for "its significant presence in the media over the last 12 months, as well as in the social debate , due to the various advances developed in this field and the derived ethical consequences”.

The winner of this 2022 was chosen among 12 candidates, several of them related to technology or the consequences derived from the war in Ukraine: apocalypse, cryptocurrency, diversity, ecocide, gas pipeline, gigafactory, flu, inflation, sex-doping, bumping into and Ukrainian.

Data analysis, cybersecurity, finance or linguistics are some of the areas that benefit from artificial intelligence. This concept went from being a technology reserved for specialists to accompanying citizens in their daily lives: in the form of a virtual assistant -like those incorporated in smartphones-, of applications that can create illustrations from previous ones or of chats that they are able to hold a conversation almost at the same level as a person.

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Artificial intelligence is also influential due to the ethical implications of the development of machine intelligence: doubts about to what extent the work that this technology is capable of doing will mean replacing certain professionals was one of the great debates of this 2022.

From the linguistic point of view, the expression Artificial intelligence "is a common denomination and, therefore, it is appropriate to write it entirely with lowercase letters," said the RAE. However, it is common to see in texts "the use of its acronym, IA, which is written with a capital letter, and is preferable to the English AI (artificial intelligence)". The exception, writing with a capital letter, "is appropriate when the expression is part of a proper name, as in the Artificial intelligence Research Institute."

According to FundéuRAE, one of the challenges that Artificial intelligence implies is teaching machines how to use Spanish properly, in order to preserve the unity of the language shared by more than 500 million people. With this objective, the LEIA project of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) was born.

The FundéuRAE, sponsored by the Efe news agency and the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE), acknowledges that Artificial intelligence is not a new concept, but "it has resonated with special force in 2022 due to the multitude of applications of this technology: from maintaining conversations to write novels”.

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Also read: Artificial intelligence: this is how the robot that tells stories, talks and explains complex topics worksThe initiative by the institution that regulates and legislates the use of the Spanish language adds to the similar competitions that in recent weeks have also been carried out by different dictionaries in the Saxon language, such as the Oxford or the Collins.