shoggoths

Noun

shoggoth (plural shoggoths)

1. A monstrous gelatinous creature featured in the horror fiction of H. P. Lovecraft.
   • When the star-headed Old Ones on this planet had synthesized their simple food forms and bred a good supply of Shoggoths, they allowed other cell groups to develop into other forms of animal and vegetable life for sundry purposes, extirpating any whose presence became troublesome. With the aid of...1968 [1931], H. P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness, London: Panther Books, page 70
2. (slang, artificial intelligence) Artificial intelligence, especially a large language model, with a relatable user-facing persona but an incomprehensible and potentially scary interior.
   • The executive explained that the Shoggoth had become a jokey reference among workers in artificial intelligence, as a vivid visual metaphor for how a large language model (the type of A.I. system that powers ChatGPT and other chatbots) actually works.2023 May 30, Kevin Roose, “Why an Octopus-like Creature Has Come to Symbolize the State of A.I.”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC