By Steve Bell ChatGPT, ChatGPT tells me, stands for Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer.Since AI (artificial intelligence) is the hottest subject around, I thought I would play around with it, in the form of OpenAI.Steve Bell gets paid by the word and doesn’t like acronyms.I have FOMO [fear of missing out] around such things, but more to the point, I’m frustrated by how so many perfectly useful phrases get translated into acronyms.Especially nonsensical ones like OBX, which people who like to vacation there say stands for Outer Banks.I guess OB [out of bounds] didn’t convey the right image.
ChatGPT’s massive information cache is capped at 2021.Curious, I asked it for the most frequently used – and therefore most popular – acronyms of 2021.In 2.3 seconds my answers unfolded onscreen.The first, you will easily guess, is COVID-19, which I did not realize stood for Coronavirus Disease 2019.
Now that’s a fair use of an acronym.Probably Dr.
Anthony Fauci’s idea.After that, as I type at my family room desk, is WFH.No, read carefully, not WTF.
WFH is “work from home,” and is closely tied to Covid.Not much space savings there, but a lot of flexibility and improved productivity, unless you’re a CEO and then it’s just bad .VPN comes next in OpenAI’s 2021 acronym rankings.If you WFH you probably know that’s a “virtual private network,” though if something’s virtual, we all know it’s not private.AI itself was only fourth in 2021, but on a sure path to the top today.
NFT came in at No.5.That’s a “non-fungible token.” I have no idea what that is , and while I could Google it, that seems so 2015 .Next came another I don’t want to mess with, ICO, “initial coin offering.” I’m guessing that ICO and NFT have hooks into each other and crypto currency.I’ve read 864 articles about crypto, and I still have no idea what it is, why we need it or how it works.
Maybe AI could explain it? My guess is that the same people who in 2005 bought $3 million homes with $100,000 down and a balloon mortgage due in three years are now heavily invested in crypto; or were in 2021, as they are likely bankrupt today.The next is mRNA.I’m not sure why it’s not MRNA, because it stands for “messenger RNA” [ribonucleic acid].
This critter is an acronym within an acronym.They couldn’t have called it just MRA? At No.
8 is LGBT, which in the last two years morphed into the more inclusive LGBTQ+, which came in at No.12 in 2021.That stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer or Questioning and more.I’m sure that would rank higher today, right ahead of FLORIDA [For Love Of Reason I Don’t Agree.] Our next two are ESG, “environmental, social, governance,” and IPO, “initial public offering.” Then, at No.11, the hero of 2020, BLM, “Black Lives Matter.” That’s followed by FDA (Food & Drug Administration), and WHO, (World Health Organization) for all the back and forth about COVID vaccines and cures.
Closing out OpenAI’s top 20 that year are NASA, CEO, GDP LGBT+, URL and HTML.You probably know what a URL is, but not that it stands for “uniform resource locator.” And we all work in HTML without necessarily needing to know it stands for “hypertext markup language.” That would seem a lot like mRNA, in that it should probably just be HML, or perhaps “WORDS.” Acronyms, like AI, are here to stay, but I have to LMAO when I consider some of the acronyms that are likely winners by now, in 2023.If someone would HMU with that list, I’d gladly share it.FWIW, though, I doubt I’d use them that often.Blame it all on texting, BTW.
When you’ll BRB ASAP I suppose you don’t have time to spell it out.LMK if you think this is a good thing.Or , WTF, is this the first nail in humanity’s coffin? AI seems likely to dump us all in to eventually OMG! Anyway, I’ll TTYL.Both sides need to demonstrate a commitment to producing an agreement that offers confidence to future negotiators..
