So let's say we make up a new word, machilligence to serve as a parallel term to intelligence but strictly for machines. How is the world different in that case vs. if we call it intelligence?
Or I guess to put it another way, if we want to coin a new term for the intelligence-esque thing that AI has, but the key differentiator is that it's an AI thing and not a human thing, then what linguistic value does the new word have? If I said "Claude is intelligent" then the fact that we're talking about AI "intelligence" is already captured in the sentence anyway; no new word needed
I think "intelligence" carries baggage. When most people hear it, they're thinking of the constellation of things: judgment, consistency, moral reasoning, the ability to decide something and stick with it. An intelligent person has an internal model of the world, values they apply consistently, and the capacity to learn from mistakes in a meaningful way. LLMs don't do any of that. They perform statistical pattern matching on text at an extraordinary scale. They're shockingly good at mimicking the surface features of intelligent behavior. I think the overuse of the word intelligence is something to criticise as grandma is not across the tech details.
It matters the same way that calling a dog or a cat intelligent matters. It humanizes the thing, even if that isn't your intention. Right now that's not a big deal since most people agree that machines should not have rights, but I wouldn't take that for granted.