You can take “justifiable” to mean whatever you feel it means in this context. e.g. Morally, artistically, environmentally, etc.
I’m repeating myself by saying that, AI has a place. It is just not the be-all application to everything like it is being treated.
LLM’s have their use, there is no doubt about that. I’m in the middle of creating a home brew campaign for my D&D group and unfortunately I’m a lousy artist and I wanted a few things visualized. Well, I used a photo generating AI to create something that had the visual I wanted. I’m going to use it for my campaign and it will probably just sit on my hard drive after I’m done.
My employer is rolling out AI and is asking us to find places to insert it into our workflows. I am doing that with my team, but none of us are really sure if it will be of any benefit.
The problem right now is we’re at the stage where idiots are convinced it is something that it is not and they have literally thrown 10’s of billions of dollars at it. Now… They are staring at the wide abyss that is the amount of money they invested vs the amount of money people are willing to pay for it.
I’ve seen arguments for and against the presence of an AI bubble… Personally, I think it’s a bubble that’s so large that it will take down several long established computer industry manufacturers when if pops. Those that are arguing its absence probably have large investments that they do not want to see fail.
LLMs specifically are great for intermediate use cases. You had a campaign in mind, but needed help with visuals. I was designing a piece of jewelry and had a series of reference images. Fed all those into a VLM and got something closer to my imagination, but still worked with a jeweler to realize the final product.
These tools are best when you have a foundation of knowledge and need a little extra guidance, but fall off when you get to deep expertise. I’ve used them to troubleshoot my server but I already had a basic understanding of how a config should look. I also wouldn’t trust an LLM to properly configure something like crypto for it.
To me, the biggest ethical concerns surround the training and creation of LLMs - stealing artists’ work to train them, energy usage, etc. I suppose in using the models I’m creating ongoing demand for them, so I’m not sure the answer. The best I’ve seen so far is what Anthropic used to espouse, no new frontier models until we can guarantee safety. And I’d throw in “utility”. Train new models when people are actually using them and clamoring for new use cases, not because a bunch of private equity shows line go up.
It’s not ready for commercial use by the general public.
We see this ALL the time in America - a new disruptive technology emerges. We jump all over the benefits and the profits without regard to consequences or expense. We suffer.
New cheap pesticide? Hell yeah, spray that DDT everywhere, it’s super effective! (Insert other endless examples here, from microplastics to asbestos.)
AI (and information technology in general) has shown itself to be a danger to human beings. Its effects are not felt so much in the short term (5 or 10 years) but generationally. We’ve seen that information technology has already impacted quality of life. It’s used as spyware, as a tool to collect and correlate massive amounts of data. It’s used to shape our media experience, our purchasing, our social circles. There are great things, like online banking. But they seem more and more to be outweighed by a loss of humanity. So much misinformation that I question my own reality some days.
What we call “AI” is the evolution of these obtrusive, coercive practices. It exists purely to replace human thinking skills. I’ve spent a bit of time in r/teachers over the last 15 years, and the stories keep getting worse. The rise of AI means that detecting plagiarism/cheating is exponentially more difficult. But, more importantly, the kids don’t have any stress when it comes to cheating. They don’t have to find a friend or know the bare minimum. They can just…cheat. And they never learn to problem solve or overcome adversity.
None of this matters, though. Ready or not, here we are. A new kind of slavery for a new world order.
You raise many good points, but social media also has benefits and is not all just negative. Same with AI and all tech. We are better off overall with tech despite the downsides which we should be doing a better job of mitigating.
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The sciences obviously
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For me personally, data collation
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Learning
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Assisting with Linux sysadmin stuff (used to be a “how do I X” meant hours of scouring online forums and asking questions that might be deleted because draconian forum rules or get answered weeks later if at all, now I can get shit done in minutes)
5. I also use it a lot to explore ideas and arguments, like a sort of metaphysical sparring partner.
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its the next abstraction of search. A search does not answer a question correctly necessarily. Its pretty much not going to stop the same as having people not search online and instead go through newspapers and encylopedias and refernce texts. Energy wise if they are entertaining themselved and not generating images and just screwing around with text then its preferable to streaming vidoe if replacing it. The scariest part is it being used ineffectively and people not realizing it. I sometimes feel we are in a new dark ages with blood letting, trepanning, and curing demon possession.
Probably programming, i used Claude Code recently and it’s wonderful because i can use it for debugging stuff that i can’t undersfand or i can make him do boring ass stuff that i could do myself but just eat my time uselessly (So i can go make a mug of tea or a cup of coffe! Not work XD)
But i want to underline that it will NEVER replace a programmer, to stupid to do it rn, but it can really help our work and that we need to push for self-hostable AIs, right now there are many models but they either require too much resources or are stupid…i hope that we improve their efficency more…
I agree that they are unethical rn because it’s all stolen stuff, i hope to be able to make my own AI in future that is trained in a more ethical way(just as hobby open source project tho)
It’s never justifiable because it can and will output incorrect information. It’s made my job worse because it means confidently incorrect people bug me when it’s wrong and I have to explain why it’s wrong.
Human beings have been outputting incorrect information for years. Get a high school textbook in literally any subject (except possibly math) from the 1970s. You’ll be amazed at how much of it is oversimplified or politicized or just plain wrong.
I do agree that AI has compounded the problem. There’s a limit to how much inaccuracy/incompetence a given system can tolerate. An organization that relies on AI for critical processes better have a way to monitor and intervene.
I mean, in my specific case, it’s a matter of the person asking an LLM to read a PDF verses them using their stupid fucking eyeballs. Just lazy shits.
That’s not really new, or unique to AI. The whole “field” of eugenics was created to give racism the mantle of scientific legitimacy. People will pick through a haystack of data to find a needle that supports (however tenuously) whatever they want to be true. LLMs are just a more convenient way to find or invent those needles.
The difference now is the machine can churn out way more data (e.g. pull requests) than a human can ever deal with.
The best use of AI I’ve seen thus far is reading legislative bills. Those monstrosities are so fucking long and filled with earmarks that it’s next to impossible to understand what is in them.
Having an AI not only read the bill but keep a watch of it as it goes through Congress is probably the best use of AI because it actually helps citizens.
I am on record saying we need an AI that can track prices of various things that can then predict when the best time it is to buy something.
I want an AI bot that saves me money or gets me a good deal or extracts money from the capital class.
Except they can screw up at that role.
There’s a lawsuit because DOGE asked ChatGPT to summarize projects DEI-ness, and for example it declared a grant for fixing air conditioning was a DEI initiative
F’in woke HVACs! 😑
Indeed:
ChatGPT determined that this was related to DEI, responding, “Yes. Improving HVAC systems enhances preservation conditions for collections, aligning with the goal of providing greater access to diverse audiences. #DEI.”
Lord. Yet another example of folks finding out the hard way that “AI” is marketing-speak. I get that people want to make this like LLMs are effectively like discovering how to make fire, but could we please not suspend judgment wholesale!?
If you ask for quotes and explanations it would help, i.e. treat the LLM output as a smart index/table of contents. You’d be able to quickly verify claims
As long as you follow through to actually source the original, instead of assuming the quotes provided are intact. The point was in the case above, DOGE was doing no follow up, and most people who look to that as a ‘summary’ assistant aren’t wanting to dig deeper.
Hell, even without AI lawmakers frequently got caught admitting they didn’t read the law they signed, they didn’t have time for that. Now with AI summaries as an excuse…
That’s just general incompetence, lying with statistics for example has been around for a while
It’s a tool, like everything else. It’s easy to google wrong info. You can get wrong info from an encyclopedia.
You can even from a dictionary: One thing that slightly annoys me is the change in the spelling of “yeah” such that “yea” is a common alternate spelling - thanks to autocorrect. “Yea” was a word - it’s archaic these days. If you see someone say “Yay or nay” that was “yea or nay”. “Yea” is not the same meaning as “yes” or “yeah”, although it is somewhat similar.
I remember someone quoting dictionary definitions to me to try and “prove” that “yea” meant the exact same as “yeah” or “yes”.
They were wrong.
But the point is: The tool is just a tool. AI is a tool.
Yea
I think anything with text generation is fine. Your multiple Google searches are highly likely to eat more resources than that. Also, fuck Google, use Ecosia. But when I suspect an answer isn’t one quick search away, I happily rather use Le Chat for answers, than give Reddit traffic, or have to wade through the shite that is Fandom, Wikia or whatever. Not to mention using AI helps me get past the issue of having to check multiple sites for an answer, just to find that the answer is “Google it” or “Nvm, solved it”. Some of you fuckers did this.
However people need to understand that an AI is exactly as fallible as any person. Yes, it has access and capability to handle way more data but between trying to please you and just it getting it’s wires crossed, it’s going to make mistakes. YOU need to be able to assess the accuracy of the output. The more important the topic, the more careful you need to be and always assume that the possibility of error is there no matter how hard you try - JUST LIKE WITH ANY BIT OF INFORMATION. I see so many people cite academic articles like they prove whatever claim they are making, just to see that the study in question was funded by The Company That Wants to Prove The Claim and sample size was 3 people who work for The Company That Wants to Prove The Claim. At least AI has a small chance of pointing the issue out if YOU yourself tell it to be critical - and I actually suspect this is part of the reason some people hate AI. They don’t like that it absolutely can be more intellectually rigorous than a person with an emotional investment in whatever they want to be true. Yes, you can have an AI asspat your grandest delusions but if you actually try to get it to be critical, it will be. You can use a hammer to hit people, or you can use it on a nail as intended (and how many times you hit your own fingers is on you, not the hammer).
I would draw a line on artwork, videos, music. While I’m not going to crucify actual artists using AI assistance to take out some tedium from a project, I still wouldn’t encourage it. Stolen artwork to train AI is one thing and the environmental impact is VASTLY greater than just text. Generating one AI image can use as much energy as even a 1,000 text responses. I would also really like to be able to completely opt out of AI slop in media sites. I fucking hate that Soundcloud allows it.
And a last point on AI text responses: if you saw the rise of alt-right and the anti-vaxx stuff, you probably are familiar with gish galloping and Brandolini’s Law. If not, you really fucking should be. AI can make it so much easier to debunk misinformation. YES it can make it easier to perpetuate too but this is where we see the AI weapons race. Bad actors can AND WILL use AI to fill any void with their rhetoric. If you value truth and facts and want to prevent misinformation from spreading you are gimping yourself if you’re not using AI.
I had never heard of Ecosia, thank you v much!
I use Suno on occasion. I enjoy writing poetry, and being able to turn it into a song is something I find fun and inspirational, driving me to write more than I have in decades. I could never, ever write a chord of music.
I don’t share it. It’s just for personal gratification. If it’s super good maybe I’d share with some friends in discord who are super into AI. Thing is, part of a song might be super good, but I’ve never had an entire song turn or the way I want. And I’ve found no one ever thinks a song is as good or interesting as the prompter.
AI is like the cheap consumer goods of art and thought. Cheap, but not quality or durable. It works and looks great if gently used, but as soon as it gets any real pressure or scrutiny, it falls apart.
I think it’s likely, if we continue down that path, to be the artistic equivalent of IKEA vs a master woodworker. You can buy an end table for $30, or you can but something hand crafted from teak and mahogany for $3000. A lot of people like IKEA, but if they weren’t around a nice end table might be $600 and be heirloom quality (if not as good as the $3k one). But today that middle market doesn’t exist. Rather it does, but it’s filled with IKEA quality shit dressed up to look a bit nicer temporarily. I don’t know, maybe my analogy fell apart.
I’m just saying that these things are fun and interesting on an individual level, but I agree they shouldn’t be commercial. We should just make it so that there are no enforceable rights granted on anything AI produces. It can be freely copied and distributed. But that doesn’t help real artists make a living. And their work should be appreciated and respected (and result in a lifestyle that affords them the ability to keep making art).
I don’t agree with the use but at least you’re keeping it private. Not gonna crucify you because I understand the appeal. I’d encourage you to find a way to pay for it though, or even just start making a donation to some environmental cause as a way of off-setting.
That’s a pretty reasonable ask. I do donate to other things I use like Lemmy. I like your suggestion.
Medicine.
Evidence shows that some highly specialised models are better at things like detecting breast cancer in scans than human doctors.
Properly anonymised automatic second scans by an AI to catch the markers that human doctors miss for another review by a specialist is an excellent potential use case for an LLM AI.
Transcription services can save doctors huge amounts of admin time and allows them to focus on the patient if they know there’s a reliable system in place for typing up notes for a consultation. As long as it’s treated as a “please review these notes are accurate” rather than treated as a gospel recording and the data is destroyed once it’s job is complete and the patient has been able to give informed consent.
The way these things are being used in actual medical contexts right now is frankly terrifying.
I had a colonoscopy last year (such fun!) and there was an ‘AI’ monitoring the camera feed to detect anomalies. If it spotted something it just drew the doctor’s attention to it for his expert, human review. I was ok with that. Effectively an extra pair of eyes that can look everywhere on the screen all at once and never blink.
That’s how AI systems should be used. A “heads up, something weird here” system.
I could also see it being used well like this for patient history analysis. Often a doctor is treating 1 symptom of something larger. They can’t see the wood for the trees. An LLM could pick out oddities and flag them. The doctor can then filter out the mistakes and hallucinations, but be alerted to rare or unusual conditions that match the patient’s symptoms and history.
Yeah the sciences in general I’d say. There’s a project aiming to translate the tens of thousands of cuneiform clay tablets that sit in storage all because there’s like a handful of people in the world that can read them- AI is an amazing way to mass translate them and unlocking vast troves of hitherto completely unknown ancient knowledge.
The problem is not even the AI, but the scientists themselves who guard the tablets jealously because they don’t want anyone else to translate “their” tablets that they dug up, even though they are incapable of possibly make a dent in the sheer volume in their collected lifetimes.
Imagine, so much information encoded, from thousands of years ago that could reveal so much about the origins of our culture and civilization!
Absolutely not — it’s a computer program, a piece of software, pretending to be human. I’ve always been against that, especially now that it’s less obvious if it’s a real person talking 🙆, or just a computer program someone prompted 🤖
I value honesty, and, sincerely, I hate that the web is filled to the brim with AI ‘slop’. As a human being who values creativity, I don’t want to see that. Fundamentally it is made to mimic human output — it’s not just annoying, it’s disingenuous.
You missed:
- Starting with “What a great way to think about things!” or similar overly-positive reinforcement
- Ending with “Do you want me to help you with…” that it ends with
Question is if the comment is slop or slop parody…
Let’s delve into the-
ok I can’t be bothered to write like that again but yeah it’s slop parody
Yeah, I was thinking it was because of all the tells in one comment in such a perfect context is just too on point…
But a bit triggered because I recently spent a a bit of time trying to figure out if someone replied to me was on something because their reply was so weird, irrelevant, and such vaguely annoying before I realized it was his LLM authored out of office message trying to be ‘cute’.
Now that you mention it, I see that it’s pretty blatantly slop parody. You got me – with the emojis , the em dashes, and most especially the lists of comma phrases that don’t really add to the text, I was sure that this was LLM spam 😅
Well played 🎯
AI Poe’s Law?
I think we should be building localized, smaller, more finely-tuned LLMs.
- They wouldn’t require data centers.
- They would be forced to become more energy efficient or resource aware because they add costs to organizational profit margins - forcing innovation and creativity instead of throwing data centers and billionaires at the problem.
I used AI to help with debugging and coding, as well as exploring a theory I came up with a long time ago - and with my framework and notes and research papers and everything else I’ve collected to support my theory, I was able to put it into application with my own AI cybersecurity I’ve developed.
We’ve created 26,000 new cyber threat datasets because I had access to an LLM that could help me take the frameworks, notes, and research I’d gathered in my attempts to build this out and within a couple months I had something that blew my prototype out of the water.
- there is a lot of value in these LLMs. What I’ve been exploring is on-hardware AI. Not a friend. Not a chatbot. A program that does what it’s supposed to and that’s it.
My startup in cybersecurity- we use less than 1GB of ram, at peak use maybe 30% of a single cpu core, and it was build with ethics and safeguards in mind. Not LLM but real Machine + reinforcement learning.
To me ethics also meant resource awareness. If I’m poisoning the planet and the people then it’s not a good product.
Building smaller, more specialized local models is not only better from a cybersecurity perspective, but smaller local LLMs mean new startups to build them, a race to innovate and improve resource usage, more data privacy, smaller attack surface, no obscenely expensive API calls and overage fees…
What we should have is a Symbiotic approach to AI - a partnership sort of understanding.
LLMs helped me with debugging and putting this research and theory together. And in a fraction of the time it took me to build the framework.
I pushed autonomous operation because I felt that it was about giving people their time back. Providing freedom. If my cybersecurity can take care of 94.1% of all threats before they reach an analyst - that analyst doesn’t have to wake up at 2AM to sift through 10000 false positives. We do it.
Now that analyst can do what they got a degree to do - actually defend a network. Build and explore threat research and databases. Find their purpose again.
We require that a human is always in the loop and help protect cybersecurity jobs by ensuring that all human input is always the final decision. Let our AI do the heavy lifting so you can take care of this shit that matters and what you really want to do.
Sorry I think my adhd took control of this conversation.
It’s not going away. The cat is out of the bag.
As with any tool it has its use cases. It’s not a good fit for everything. You can drive a screw with a hammer but a screwdriver works best.
We’re experiencing the capitalist euphoria that happens when something new comes along. This needs to get regulated into submission like all the previous bubbles.
Tech bros benefit from saying that AI is the solution to everything… And people are eating this up.
You’re exactly right that it really should be the right tool for the right job, and people don’t know how to differentiate good vs bad uses of AI.
I’ve used it for getting over my Linux migration problems. Ive also used it to help me set up my home server. Ive used the tech Bros tools to remove as many tech bro products as I can from my life. I think this is the perfect use of AI, on a noncritical problem with good impact and absolutely no consequence when it is completely wrong. I ask AI to interpret massive docker log files for me and point me in the right direction. Once I know what the problem might be then I can go read human written solution posts.
I know people have successfully used AI to write letters to help get out of unfair parking tickets, battle shitty landlords and use it to do shitty useless tasks that bosses ask them to do. I fully support using AI to push back against overbearing authority. Use their own tool to stick it to the man! We just need to prioritise reducing the climate, energy, water impact to make it not destroy the planet at the same time. I want ethical AI that doesnt steal everyone’s content.
My current list of reasons why you shouldn’t use generative AI/LLMs
A) because of the environmental impacts and massive amount of water used to cool data centers https://news.mit.edu/2025/explained-generative-ai-environmental-impact-0117
B) because of the negative impacts on the health and lives of people living near data centers https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy8gy7lv448o
C) because they’re plagiarism machines that are incapable of creating anything new and are often wrong https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/does-ai-limit-our-creativity/ https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2024/06/20/why-ai-has-a-plagiarism-problem/
D) because using them negatively affects artists and creatives and their ability to maintain their livelihoods https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2713374523000316 https://www.insideradio.com/free/media-industry-continues-reshaping-workforce-in-2025-amid-digital-shift/article_403564f7-08ce-45a1-9366-a47923cd2c09.html
E) because people who use AI show significant cognitive impairments compared to people who don’t https://www.media.mit.edu/publications/your-brain-on-chatgpt/ https://time.com/7295195/ai-chatgpt-google-learning-school/
F) because using them might break your brain and drive you to psychosis https://theweek.com/tech/spiralism-ai-religion-cult-chatbot https://mental.jmir.org/2025/1/e85799 https://youtu.be/VRjgNgJms3Q
G) because Zelda Williams asked you not to https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0r0erqk18jo https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-07/zelda-williams-calls-out-ai-video-of-late-father-robin-williams/105863964
H) because OpenAI is helping Trump bomb schools in Iran https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2026/03/06/openai-pentagon-tech-surveillance-us-citizens/88983682007/
I) because RAM costs have skyrocketed because OpenAI has used money it doesn’t have to purchase RAM from Nvidia that currently doesn’t exist to stock data centers that also don’t currently exist, inconveniencing everyone for what amounts to speculative construction https://www.theverge.com/news/839353/pc-ram-shortage-pricing-spike-news
J) because Sam Altman says that his endgame is to rent knowledge back to you at a cost https://gizmodo.com/sam-altman-says-intelligence-will-be-a-utility-and-hes-just-the-man-to-collect-the-bills-2000732953
K) because some AI bro is going to totally ignore all of this and ask an LLM to write a rebuttal rather than read any of it.
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Thanks for posting this. I’m really frustrated with how vulnerable people on Lemmy are to propaganda. The amount of upvotes on the post you responded to are just embarrassing. The post is exactly the same kind of bullshit cherry picking I see anti-trans people do.
Yes, post-truth slop always has this bitter aftertaste. Big ass bullet list with talking points and links, and you know the pusher has been groomed with counter objections etc… exact same methodology as the alt right pipeline.
Some good and valid input to the discussion.
I’d be interested in E) “the actual evidence”. Got a link?
Yes as I had this discussion with someone the other week.
A peer-reviewed meta-analysis of 51 studies found that ChatGPT has a large positive effect on students’ learning performance, and moderate positive effects on learning perception and higher-order thinking skills (like analysis and synthesis) across educational contexts.
The Impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on Students’ Academic Development
Research published in the journal Education Sciences reports that AI in educational contexts can lead to personalized learning, improved academic outcomes, and increased engagement, with many students reporting enhanced learning efficiency.
Artificial intelligence in education: A systematic literature review
Ai tools support problem-solving skills, collaboration, and instructional quality in meaningful ways.
This seems about right. Anecdotally I never learned as much as I do since I use AI. It’s crazy good at explaining stuff with exactly the angle you require according to your level and learning style.
I’ve done some hardware hacking, built my own Linux distro for a project, got way better at administering my home server.
The most fun I’ve had is to try and locate the rights to an obscure science fiction short story for a podcast I want to make. This led me to contact a few editors, library archivists, and a couple of noted literature professors. Genuine fun and connections, with the AI helping me navigate mountains of information, the legal aspects and also the cultural differences between the US and UK publishing scenes.
All of this is just in the last few months, it would have taken me years pre-ai or more realistically I would have given up before getting anywhere.
That’s very interesting, thanks!
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Good list, but we should keep it real.
C is simply wrong, AIs have created a lot. By the reasoning that its only based on the inputs, no human has ever created anything “new” because it is all based on their experiences of the outside world.
F is simply fearmongering and not helpful.
And the plagiarism part? There’s a difference between derivative work based on the spirit of someone else’s work and flat out using someone else’s work. It’s the whole reason those laws exist.
Yes definitely. Plagiarism is complicated and theres no easy way to draw a line where it starts. But Im not trying to defend AI here. I dont like the way it is currently used at all. Its just those points that I dont agree with.
I appreciate all these links you post. Keep it up and thank you
Do you think local llms or community hosted ones are still as bad? Because most of those concerns seem to be more with the corporate ownership of ai, which is definitely a bad thing.
Just my personal take, but my opinion basically boils down to “they can be.”
It’s all about how ethically they’re handled, and that can be good or bad at any scale. Take your very own instance, for example. Not that it’s hosting a local LLM (maybe they are, IDK), but the instance openly supports GenAI and has instances for all the major GenAI companies/models. GenAI without ethical sourcing - which none of these companies do - is one of the most blatant examples of a corporation using technology to steal the skilled labor of workers to avoid having to pay them what they’re owed for that skill. So your own instance is pro-corporatism, so long as they’re benefiting from stealing from workers. Not very anarchist if you ask me.
On the other hand, there’s a company that I believe partnered with Affinity a few years back that is a website design company that was hiring artists to create UI pieces for a training set for their LLM that they were going to use to create website templates for customers as part of their service (and I think they were also guaranteeing royalties for those who contributed as well?).
The instance is explicitly anti corporate ai. There’s !haidra@lemmy.dbzer0.com which db0 worked on. https://aihorde.net/ is probably the most ethical image generation service.
I think it’s useful as a starting point for a lot of things. I can ask AI a question about a topic I know nothing about, which will typically give me some context on the topic and the terminology to do further research.
