The words used in communications on how AI (artificial intelligence) works has been less than ideal. By "humanizing" the communications language of the technology, it only adds to the confusion by deflecting how the software/application/system works. Personally, I find this irritating because it continues to keep patients in the dark. Enough.

Therefore, we suggest the use of the following words used in healthcare explanations aimed at patients:

• "listens" - AI doesn't listen; it "captures audio" or "records your conversation" (this is AI Scribes specific)
• "hears" - AI doesn't have ears; it has a microphone. Again, it "records speech", "stores it" and "processes it into text". This is AI Scribe specific but there could be other Use Cases.
• "understands" - NOPE! It doesn't have a brain; nor emotions. It has CPU's, memory and hard drives. It “processes input” and follows code (or coding instructions).
• "responds" - Try "generates output"
• "interprets" - AI does not have a brain - it follows instruction sets. This one really is context specific. In regards to patient notes in an EMR, it does "summarize content". However, in the case of AI using LLM's, it "seeks out patterns in the data" to produce the output.
• "learns" - It's not a life-form; it processes input.

And, I'm sure that there are a lot of other examples out there.