Artificial intelligence models will make mistakes. We need more accurate language to describe them.

The language we use to discuss the mistakes AI has made and will continue to make is critically important — not to spur symbolic protest against modern technology or fear-mongering over a pending “war against the machines,” but to sharpen the way we think about many sorts of complicated interactions between human users and AI algorithms that seem inevitable. If we wait too long, the flaws may become too big to fix, and our lives beset by problems that we don’t have the right words to describe.