“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride by William Goldman
Terminology Matters | Integrator Insights
By Mike Pedersen
Higher education AV has gotten sloppy lately, and it has gotten to the major annoyance level for me. What are we sloppy with? Terminology. There seems to be this mad rush to throw around buzzwords without paying attention to what they really mean. Our good friend Steve “Chewie” Stavar recently said: “#AV needs to do a better job of education and not throwing terms around for advertising shock value.” I couldn’t agree more! While the issue is widespread, there are two words I keep seeing recently that are used flat-out incorrectly or at least out of context: AI and hologram. Let’s talk more about what they are, what they are not, and what terminology we should be using instead.
Let’s start with artificial intelligence, or AI. I recently posted a poll on LinkedIn that asked the question “Is the Pro AV vertical using the terminology for artificial intelligence (AI) correctly?” An overwhelming 81% of the respondents agreed we are misusing the term. What is AI? According to Encyclopedia Britannica, “artificial intelligence (AI), the ability of a digital computer or computer-controlled robot to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings. The term is frequently applied to the project of developing systems endowed with the intellectual processes characteristic of humans, such as the ability to reason, discover meaning, generalize, or learn from past experience.” There are a lot of very interesting technological developments occurring within Pro AV: auto tracking/framing cameras, cloud-based real-time system monitoring solutions, beam-forming microphone arrays, and virtual production systems. These are fascinating technologies, but they don’t really fall into the realm of AI. These and so many more technologies would be much better classified as either machine learning (ML) or simply advanced automation. None of these technologies involve computer-based reasoning or generalizing. While much closer to AI than most technologies, I don’t consider ChatGPT to be AI either. It is a well designed machine learning algorithm that has been fed a huge array of various documents and is likely using a probabilistic approach to determine what order words would be used in by a human. It is incredibly impressive to the point of being down right spooky at times, but I don’t personally consider it a proper AI. We should continue to support amazing technologies in our industry, but let’s make sure we use proper terminology such as ML or automation.
Let’s talk about holograms. By definition, a hologram is a very thin, practically 2-dimensional, presentation that provides a perspective of depth. That is not what most people think today when they think “hologram.” When the casual person thinks “hologram” they typically think of Princess Leia being projected into thin air by R2-D2 or the plans for the Death Star being presented to the rebel squadrons. Such a display technology would be more precisely called a volumetric display. Now that we have the right terminology, let’s clear up the second notion: high definition commercial free-air volumetric displays do currently exist. Period. How close can we come to such a display today? There are a few solutions out that that use lasers to either light up and move a particle in the air or simply ionize a small section of air to create a glow. So far, these solutions are primarily experiments by university faculty, and are not quite ready for prime time. There are a few other technologies that are commonly referred to as holographic: the most common one is an illusion called “Pepper’s ghost.” Pepper’s ghost effectively uses a plane of glass in a darkened room to reflect a brightly lit object (or flat panel display) off to one side. If there are objects lit up behind the glass, the audience will see both the lit objects behind the glass as well as the reflection off the front of the glass. This is the effect used to show musical artists or CEOs on a stage from “around the world.” The most recent technology is a product from our friends at ARHT. Their ARHT CAPSULE is a very cool product that basically consists of a transparent OLED display on the front of a well lit white box. With a camera view on well-lit subjects 1-3 feet in front of a white background displayed on the transparent display, you really do get a sense of them being there in 3D. The visual cue is the shadows that are created by the well-lit subjects onto the white background behind them. Those shadows also appear on the OLED display which really tricks the eye. Is it a cool product? Oh, heck yeah! I was truly impressed seeing it at ISE. Is it a hologram or holographic? No, it absolutely is not. We really need to be very careful with our terminology.
Is that all? Well, Tim Van Woeart mentioned the term “smart classroom.” We both agree that term gets way overused with classrooms that are truly not that “smart” at all. We could also move beyond just improperly used terminology to discuss over-hyped terms with little actual current application, like “Metaverse.” “But what’s the point,” you may ask? The point is credibility. If there is one thing the higher education audiovisual segment has been desperately seeking for years is respect and credibility. Now that we are starting to gain that respect, and we definitely are, we now need to protect that. One of the best ways to maintain credibility is by being precise and accurate in all our formal and informal communication. That’s why this has been annoying me so much. We are not in the gee-whiz marketing business; we are in the credible technology leadership business. As Steve referenced in his quote above, we are also in the education business. We have the opportunity to take a lead in the larger pro AV segment by not only using terminology correctly, but also to educate on what the more accurate terminology is and why. Let’s make sure our use of terminology supports our goal of maintaining credibility.
Just remember, friends don’t let friends use wrong terminology.
