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It's just like Freemasonry.

Author | Moonshot
edit| Jingyu

In addition to "lots of money", "lots of big names" and "lots of news", the biggest common feature of today's hottest AI companies and Internet giants is something you probably can't guess.

The answer is——the "✨" symbol!

The ✨ symbol representing AI appeared at Samsung's new product launch conference not long ago｜Image source: CNET

Google's Gemini icon has a four-pointed star, and ChatGPT Plus has two four-pointed stars, forcing Samsung, which entered the market later, to put four stars directly after Galaxy AI. Of course, they may also mean to have one more star than Samsung. Domestic designs are not lagging behind. For example, DingTalk's AI function is called "Magic Wand", which is a ✨ plus a slash.

Maybe some of the ✨ have been taken up by big companies, and other companies will incorporate ✨ into their icons, such as Adobe's AI fill, Grammarly's AI grammar repair, Spotify's smart random play...

The fire of ✨ is spreading across the technology industry.

Before I know it, I see more stars on the screen than I see in the sky.。

What exactly is the ✨ symbol, and why has it become the favorite logo of all AI companies?

01

Most popular emoji

If you type "星" in the Chinese input method, the ✨ emoji will pop up. This symbol is called Sparkles in English, which means "shine". It is one of the most popular emojis in the world. It has become more and more popular on social media in recent years. Many people will directly add ✨ to their IDs. It is used to express various positive emotions, such as love, happiness, beauty, gratitude, excitement, cleanliness...

✨ is more popular than ❤️ on social media | Image source: David Imel

✨ is used in daily life to express some "little happiness" in life, such as "I cleaned my room today ✨~", or it can be used together with other symbols ❤️✨ to emphasize one's excitement and love. After all, ✨ is more "bling bling" and more dynamic than the remaining three star symbols ⭐️,,,.

But the ✨ symbol has been given another image in recent years. According to the symbol introduction of ✨ in emojipedia (emoji encyclopedia),As of the end of 2023, ✨ is often used to represent the function of artificial intelligence, and 2023 is the "first year" that artificial intelligence begins to be widely used in the mass market.。

This caused dissatisfaction among many ✨ users. They tweeted, wrote articles and even made a half-hour video to denounce the big company for putting such a vivid symbol on its own cold AI product.

A half-hour video shows you how AI steals ✨｜Image source: Youtube

But ✨ is not just being used in software icon design. Adobe PS launched the "Magic Wand" cutout function more than ten years ago, and the icon is a ✨ on the wand; Twitter added the function of switching algorithm recommendations and timelines in 2019, and the function icon is a blue ✨; premium members of Medium, a media platform that has nothing to do with artificial intelligence, also use ✨.

Nowadays, the AI ​​industry is using ✨ so tacitly.The reason is simple. Designers and users alike think that ✨ is really easy to use.。

Gali Erez, head of Wix, which uses ✨ as its icon, said that using ✨ can make users feel that artificial intelligence is more pleasant, while using more straightforward and technological icons will only make artificial intelligence tools look confusing and difficult to use. Indeed, the following tool-style icons look like they have a "class flavor" and will only give people a sense of practicality rather than desire to use.

Cartoony but cool devices｜Source: emoji keyboard

But there are so many symbols to express positivity and joy, why not use ☀️? Why does each family have to use only one symbol?

Dan Saffer, professor of human-computer interaction at Carnegie Mellon University, believes that the omnipresence of ✨ is because it has somehow become an industry visual design standard.All companies are afraid that users don’t know that this is an AI function, so they put ✨ on the function icon. In essence, it is the FOMO (fear of missing out) psychology at work.。

It is easy to understand by changing the symbol. The "Send" icon of many software uses the symbol of a paper airplane, and users know at a glance that this button means "send message" rather than uploading a picture.

Secondly, ✨ is too versatile. Emoji designer Neil Cohn said that ✨ is a "visual affix" symbol that can be attached to many icons to enhance the impression. Just like this symbol, without ✨, it is just a stick, but with ✨, it becomes a magic wand. When the heroine appears in Japanese comics, the background is removed and a star effect is added, and the sound effect of "bling bling" is added. Anyone who sees it will be amazed.

✨Background that often appears in Japanese anime｜Image source: Internet

Zoom's artificial intelligence assistant is also a ✨. Madison Holbrook, Zoom's chief product designer, explained that "✨ carries a sense of surprise and joy, symbolizing the spark of creativity and capturing the magic of artificial intelligence."

"Magic" is a word that often appears with ✨. The symbol theme of ✨ on emojipedia also says "Fantasy & Magic". Perhaps AI products like to use ✨ because they want to convey to users that the product is exciting and has magical functions, which may encourage more people to use AI. After all, AI is often like a magical black box. Users don't know how it works, but they can get direct answers.

But the question is, do technological matters need to be related to metaphysics?

Everyone knows that we should be wary of deification, but when it comes to artificial intelligence, why are people so obsessed with making AI "magical"?

02

The end of "metaphysics" is science

Technology critic Rachel Metz recently wrote an article on CNET titled "I need tech companies to stop letting AI use ✨". In her opinion, the abuse of the ✨ symbol by AI products is precisely an attempt by these companies to cover up really serious problems.

「✨Diverting attention from the negative consequences of AI, including privacy issues, environmental impacts, and potential job lossesOr maybe AI companies want them to look like distant stars, bright and mysterious. "Metz believes that these technology companies have taken advantage of the good feeling that the ✨ symbol has long given to the public and directly "magicized" AI so that the public will not ask deeper questions.

But it’s just an emoji. Can it rise to the level of shaping the collective subconscious?

Stars light up, illuminating the future of AI｜Image source: Medium

Moreover, in the marketing of technology products, "magic" is not a new word. Whether it is the Adobe Magic Wand mentioned above, or the Magic Keyboard/Mouse of Apple Computer, they all want to use magic to emphasize the ease of use and usability of the product.

But artificial intelligence seems to be a little different. We don’t quite understand how it works, its ethical boundaries are still being discussed, and the real impact it may have in the future is difficult to estimate.

Its appearance is indeed like magic, a black box, a Pandora's box. Even for AI companies, the same is true. How the big model trained with trillions of data works, and how to correct problems, is also a metaphysical question for these AI scientists and practitioners.

However, metaphysics still needs to evolve into science。

✨It looks beautiful and romantic, but ultimately AI as a technology still needs to be "implemented" and truly solve practical problems in people's lives and work, and it can continue to evolve down to earth, so that it can truly realize the popularization of AI technology and even move towards the future of AGI.

*Header image source: David Imel

This article is an original article from Geek Park. For reprinting, please contact Geek Jun on WeChat: geekparkGO

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