9. AI is… an enthusiastic intern. This is a folk metaphor rather than a coined one, in the sense that many people who use LLMs have described the experience as “like having a young intern who is smart, keen, industrious and free!” (Most of them add that, “you have to check their work, though”). In a way, this gives the metaphor a different kind of cultural authority. The other metaphors are all attributable coinages, usually from academics or polemicists with a specific argument to make. “The intern” has emerged organically from everyday usage, which suggests it’s capturing something that people are reaching for intuitively when they try to explain their actual experience of using these tools. But, of course, it also anthropomorphises!
