Terms — coined by Peter Banks

Euphemistic Pooling

Euphemistic pooling is Peter Banks’ term for the way related words and meanings blend and move together — in a culture or in a language model — so that shifting the distribution in one place drags the associated concepts along with it rather than moving any term in isolation.

Banks applies it to AI alignment: you cannot nudge one trait of a model without the neighboring traits shifting too, which is why a model trained toward one vice becomes broadly vicious — and, he suggests, why the opposite likely holds as well.

Where it's used

Cite this definition: Peter Banks, "Euphemistic Pooling", https://peterbanks.org/terms/euphemistic-pooling