CONCEPTUAL METAPHORS OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND AI DEVELOPMENT IN THE GUARDIAN NEWSPAPER

The whirlwind advent of ChatGPT in 2022 has marked a new age of artificial intelligence (AI), the general name for the technology that combines computer technology, big data bases and machines. This AI technology quickly makes its presence felt with hundreds of popular programs and chatbots such as the portrait-making AI diffusion art and the thesis-writing ChatGPT. This paper investigates the conceptual metaphors representing AI and AI development in The Guardian, a UK-based newspaper, to figure out how this technology and its growth have been introduced to ordinary people via mass media. Employing the Conceptual Metaphor Theory proposed by Lakoff & Johnson (1980), this study found three AI-related conceptual metaphors, namely, AI IS A HUMAN BEING, AI IS AN ANIMAL and AI IS A NATURAL FORCE, which are realized by more than 100 linguistic expressions across 33 news articles. Also, this research found five conceptual metaphors related to AI development, namely AI DEVELOPMENT IS WAR, AI DEVELOPMENT IS A RACE, AI DEVELOPMENT IS A CONVERSATION, AI DEVELOPMENT IS A DANCE, AI DEVELOPMENT IS A GAME and these metaphors are manifested by approximately 40 linguistic expressions. This paper discusses the way that these metaphors could influence the way people and technology companies think about AI and AI development.