Artifice

Artifice (pronounced ahr-tuh-fis)

(1) A clever trick or stratagem; a cunning, crafty device or expedient; wile.

(2) Trickery; guile; a crafty but underhanded deception.

(3) Cunning; ingenuity; inventiveness; a trick played out as an ingenious, but artful, ruse.

(4) A skilful or artful contrivance or expedient.

(5) A strategic manoeuvre that uses some clever means to avoid detection or capture; a tactical move to gain advantage.

(6) To construct by means of technical skill or some specialised art (cited by many sources as archaic but still used and useful in this sense).

1525–1535: From the Middle English in the sense of “workmanship, the making of something by craft or skill”, from the fourteenth century Middle French artifice (skill, cunning), from the Old French from the Latin artificium (art, craft, skill, talent, craftsmanship; profession, trade, an employment) from artifex (genitive artificis) (artist, actor; craftsman, master (of a craft or trade); mastermind, schemer; one possessed of a specific skill), the construct being ars- (art; skill) + -fex (from facere (to make; to do)), from the primitive Indo-European root dhe (to set; to put).  As a suffix in Latin, -fex was used to represent a maker or producer.  Synonyms include subterfuge, deception, deceit and duplicity but there’s also an array of associative words such as gimmick, contrivance, duplicity, inventiveness, dodge, manoeuvre, play, scam, savvy, stratagem, machination, ploy, subterfuge, ruse, racket, tactic, expedient, device, wile and gambit.  The original meanings survive but have tended to have receded in use compared with the sense of “crafty; a device; trickery” which emerged in the 1650s.  Artifice is a noun & verb, artificer is a noun and artificing & artificed are verbs; the noun plural is artifices.

Some artifice involved: Pamela Anderson (b 1967), mostly real.

The adjective artificial dates from the late fourteenth century in the sense of “something not natural or spontaneous”, from the Old French artificial, from the Latin artificialis “of or belonging to art”, again from artificium.  The adverb artificially (by art or human skill and contrivance) dates from the early fifteenth century while the noun artificiality (appearance of art; insincerity) emerged in the 1760s, the earlier form was artificialness, documented in the 1590s; the Middle English artificy survived until the early fifteenth century.  In English, the earliest use seems to be the phrase “artificial day” (that part of the day from sunrise to sunset (as opposed to the “natural” days 24 hours)).   The early fifteenth century idea of something artificial being something The meaning “made by man, contrived by human skill and labor” was the basis of the morphing in the 1700s to “anything made in imitation of, or as a substitute for, what is natural, whether real (light, tears) or not (teeth, flowers).  The third sense (these all still running in parallel) of “full of affectation, insincere” was in use by the 1590s, the subtlety different “fictitious, assumed, not genuine” by the 1640s.  So the use depends on context: when people no peak of artificial intelligence, the implication is of “a machine which can emulate and improve upon human thought processes” and not “fake intelligence” which means something else, although, given some of the dubious results which have been provided by the early implementations of generative AI, it’s clear some fake intelligence has been produced.

The Artifice.

Founded in 2009 and based in Sweden, the Artifice is an English-language on-line magazine focusing on popular culture topics such as film, manga, anime, television, comics, on-line gaming and such.  It's a most interesting venture because the model is a platform available to anyone writing in English, submissions vetted by an editorial panel which provides criticism and suggests improvements, those published subsequently invited to contribute to the editorial process.  It's an intriguing collaborative approach, something really practical in the on-line environment and vaguely analogous with open-source software, the difference being Artifice's authors provide their content as a finished product, not something intended for others to modify and distribute though doubtlessly that happens.

The abbreviation AI is now familiar because of the sudden rise in interest in packaged generative artificial intelligence, prompted by the availability of products such as ChatGPT, ClickUp or the still embryonic extensions which bolt a version onto Google’s & Microsoft’s web browsers (Chrome and Bing respectively); Collins Dictionary named “AI” their “word of the Year 2023”, noting the sudden spike of interest in the topic wasn’t reflected in an increase on-line of the use of the words “artificial” or “intelligence” because both in general use and as a search term, “AI” had become ubiquitous.  Artificial intelligence (the science and engineering of making intelligent machines) was coined in 1956 but the abbreviation came into use only in 1971.  Since 1894, within various parts of veterinary science and livestock management, AI had been used to refer to “artificial insemination”, a mechanical form of introducing semen where required.  Most associated with cattle, when some artificiality was introduced to human reproduction, the term “in vitro fertilisation” (IVF) was preferred although it is a very different process in which fertilisation is achieved by combining an egg with sperm in vitro (from the Latin, translated literally as “in the glass”, hence the memorable (if misleading) early phrase “test-tube baby.  Because “in vitro” has become so common in English it’s probably assimilated and thus (in this context) no longer italicized.  In this it’s similar to something like the even more common de facto which, because assimilated for most purposes, is not italicized except when used in the context of legal proceedings, a nod to its status as Latin legal language.

Beware of imitations: Bees can’t be fooled but humans need a guide.

Adolf Hitler's (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) "table talk", his meandering discussions (often monologues) over meals or other informal gatherings were notoriously repetitive and quite a strain for his regular audience to sit through.  Some of the topics were predicable but one subject often mentioned was artificial honey, his interest in the concocted stuff apparently because he was provided with much of the sticky syrup in his rations while serving in the Imperial German Army (1871–1919) during World War I (1914-1918).  His sweet tooth was well-documented and whether or not it was his influence, the substance appeared in the list Ernährungsrichtlinie für die Verbrauchslenkung (Nutrition guidelines for consumption control), published in the March 1939 edition Zeitschrift für Spiritusindustrie (Spirit Industry Magazine), the presence of artificial honey and milk powder indicating the regime's multi-pronged approach to food security (although they also sponsored research on fat made from coal which sounds less tempting).  Of late, artificial honey has become controversial in a number of jurisdictions, not because of concerns about the safety of the product but because it is sometimes represented as “natural honey”.