Subject Matter Expert.
It was a tough one, but I finally found it under ‘other uses’ for Wikipedia’s Disambiguation page for SME.
Good God.
Thank you for asking.
I was too intimidated.
Now everything makes sense.
I work in a social service agency and about 8 years ago I developed an ACRONYM booklet for distribution among our staff and collaborating service providers.
It was five/six pages long and I imagine it needs updated by now.
However, I am retiring soon and DGAD (Don’t Give a Damn).
To add a little more context, I used to work for a company that put together educational programs to train professionals in new and emerging fields. The “source of knowledge” was called the SME, from whose write-ups we would create courses. I first learned about it in a phone conference, when the callers were talking about the SME. I wrote down “What’s SME?” to my neighboring coworker and she wrote back the meaning.
We had some interesting SMEs. One lived in the Arizona desert and apparently thrived on the isolation to develop his knowledge of Windows Powershell. Another one lived in Scotland and had a brogue as thick as William Wallace.
Small and Mid-size Enterprises, of course. No need to spell it out…
By “casual conversations”, I mean conversations that aren’t rigidly structured, like the legalistic minutiae of a patent application or the stylistic requirements of an academic paper. Those of us with more than average knowledge in certain subjects are usually happy to explain things to others, but questions like “what does ‘AGI’ stand for?” in a thread by and for those with some knowledge of AI are a bit annoying because (a) expanding the acronym still doesn’t adequately explain it, and (b) it’s trivial to Google with a context-based query like “artificial intelligence AGI” which not only expands the acronym but also explains it in as much detail as you care to read about.
But any of us would be happy to answer questions specific to the discussion that are not subject to generic Google queries, such as “can you elaborate on what you just said?” or “why do you think this is important?”. Only a pompous ass would be unwilling to share their knowledge for the benefit of others.
Lol i was a subject matter expert at work, for some projects. That’s a TLA I know well. The first time i ran into it, I’m sure i asked someone what it meant. I don’t Google acronyms.
Yeah, as a general rule, you are just wrong about this.
- acronyms are often hard to Google
- often, just translating it into words is plenty of information
- not everyone uses the same acronyms. Just because you think it’s obvious doesn’t mean every person who knows anything about the topic finds it obvious.
I was thinking about editing it to read "sexualy assaulted’, however I don’t think the example’s as egregious you make it out to be, because I figured those unfamiliar with the initials, would be able to pick up the context surrounding it.
Whatever.
Honestly, though SDMB is full of intellectuals and some of the most intelligent people I’ve ever conversed with, but this is still the internet, and people are bound to get a bug up their butt over something frivolous.
Certainly certain posters over others.
(Btw, I agree acronyms can be a problem).
And you translate to/from Hebrew? You picked the wrong language if you’re not a fan of acronyms…
I don’t think there’s any absolute “right” or “wrong” on matters of stylistic preference. But I do think I have some objective support for my position.
Not hard at all, as with this example of Googling “AGI” with an appropriate bit of context, which took all of the two seconds required to type the query:
Sometimes. Sometimes not. Certainly the two-second Google result above provided far more information and cites for future research than a mere expansion would have.
I think those are rare borderline cases. Those familiar with the topic would likely be familiar with the variants of the acronyms where such exist (like ECU for Engine Control Unit or ECM for Engine Control Module).
The focus on acronyms is a bit of a red herring in the case of the example used in the OP. If instead of
Look, I’m not enthused about having to watch a video to unpack your acronym. Apologizes if everyone who isn’t me knows WTF an AGI is.
he had said
Look, I’m not enthused about having to watch a video to unpack artificial general intelligence. Apologizes if everyone who isn’t me knows WTF an artificial general intelligence is.
my criticism would have been exactly the same. It isn’t about not understanding the acronym, it is about not understanding the technical area (suggested strongly by the actual not understanding of the acronym). It is just that without the acronym it becomes more obvious that it was a threadshit. Because despite the vague subject line, the question was specifically technical (though probably not actually answerable): what makes some people confident that AGI will be achieved soon?
But maybe he DID know what artificial general intelligence is. Three people have said, in this thread, that they are familiar with the concept but not with the acronym.
You know, if you aren’t going to bother to read my posts, don’t bother to reply to them. Thanks.
One issue that sometimes comes up in my line of work is when someone uses an acronym or nickname for something that is different than what I’d use. So I have to ask for clarification. And it’s not always something that’s going to come up in a Google search. And this is a situation where I absolutely have something to contribute (I would hope so after a 25 year career) but I need to know what the hell they are talking about first.
For example, there are people at my work that talk about “flashing” or “reflashing” a computer. They mean wiping the hard drive and reinstalling from scratch. I’ve only heard about flashing a BIOS (Basic Input/Output System, that you can Google, I’m not explaining it here) and if you look up “flash a computer”, you’re just going to find discussions about the BIOS or EEPROM (again, not boring you with an explanation of that one either). It’s not normally a term used for hard drives, at least not in my experience, and the first time I ran across it I had no clue what they meant.
If something like that came up in a discussion here, I might very well have to ask what they are talking about, and it’s not because I am ignorant about computers. It’s because your niche slang doesn’t match what the industry uses.
The example above where “CT” was misspelled and was therefore complete gibberish is another example.
Sometimes “just Google it” doesn’t work. (Though I admit, I did put “AGI” into Google and got an answer right away, so it absolutely works for that example.)
I’m sure it often works. I’ve had enough frustrations trying to Google acronyms that I’ve pretty much given up. Google is still great, but that’s not it’s strong point.
I don’t even know what this means. You made 16 posts in this thread at this point (now 17) and I’ve read all of them. The impression I have is that you don’t like acronyms. That’s not an objective position. Google has never failed to explain a common acronym when I’ve queried it with the appropriate context. Please don’t accuse me of “not bothering to read your posts”, unless you can point out something that I missed and failed to address – or of being objectively “wrong”…
I dunno. When discussing AIs, I would expect certain acronyms like LLM and AGI to be standard and not require spelling out, just like if I’m talking hard drives, I expect people to understand SSDs and HDDs and TB, etc.
Holy crap, I have dealt with computer infections before, but TUBERCULOSIS?!?! 
(Just kidding.)