What Generative Artificial Intelligence Means for Terminological Definitions

TL;DR

The paper examines how Generative AI (GenAI) tools affect the creation and use of terminological definitions, arguing that GenAI can accelerate and enrich terminology work while raising reliability and ethical concerns. It introduces AI-assisted terminography, particularly post-editing terminography, as a pathway for integrating AI into definition writing, and discusses both the benefits (speed, up-to-date content, context-aware definitions) and the risks (errors, bias, copyright issues, potential replacement of resources). It also outlines alternative AI-enabled approaches to support terminology work, including analysis of existing definitions and corpus-based methods. The conclusions suggest AI integration is likely inevitable, but terminological resources and skilled terminologists will remain necessary, with AI tools becoming standard components of terminology practice and requiring new competencies and governance.

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) tools like ChatGPT on the creation and consumption of terminological definitions. From the terminologist's point of view, the strategic use of GenAI tools can streamline the process of crafting definitions, reducing both time and effort, while potentially enhancing quality. GenAI tools enable AI-assisted terminography, notably post-editing terminography, where the machine produces a definition that the terminologist then corrects or refines. However, the potential of GenAI tools to fulfill all the terminological needs of a user, including term definitions, challenges the very existence of terminological definitions and resources as we know them. Unlike terminological definitions, GenAI tools can describe the knowledge activated by a term in a specific context. However, a main drawback of these tools is that their output can contain errors. For this reason, users requiring reliability will likely still resort to terminological resources for definitions. Nevertheless, with the inevitable integration of AI into terminology work, the distinction between human-created and AI-created content will become increasingly blurred.