The language we use around AI matters. It shapes perception, guides adoption, and influences how people relate to the technology. Too often, the dominant verbs are reductive: replace, automate, disrupt. These words imply loss, threat, and detachment. They feed a fear-based narrative of obsolescence. And people in defense-mode will typically resist.

But what if we changed the verbs?

Let’s try Pair. Accelerate. Enhance. Scale. Multiply. Extend

These are verbs start a different kind of conversation, help us to imagine other use cases and perhaps start to develop a mindset that’s more aligned with capability-building and human-AI partnership.

Pair

AI doesn’t stand alone. It pairs with people and processes. With expertise. Pairing suggests complementarity, not competition.

Accelerate

AI speeds up what’s already valuable - that might be a process, or a person. AI can reduce friction, shorten cycles, and unlock time. Using ‘acceleration’ turns it into a vehicle that can be ridden to get to insight, completion, and iteration faster.

Enhance

AI can elevate the quality of existing work, existing expertise. It can sharpen analysis, enrich creativity, and improve decision-making. It can suggest additions, offer objective critique and polish off rough edges.

Scale

AI helps good ideas reach further. It enables consistency, repeatability, and reach for a great idea.

AI helps people scale themselves. It extends reach, amplifies strengths, and multiplies impact.

Unique creativity can be more repeatable, hard-thought-through decisions can be referenced and applied again and again making it more consistent.

Multiply

AI doesn’t just add to, it multiplies. It takes the effort you invest and amplifies the output. Multiply suggests exponential potential. The result isn’t linear—it’s compounding.

Extend

AI can extend existing boundaries. It extends what individuals and organisations can do—beyond time zones, beyond capacity, beyond the limits of a single mind. Extend is about reach: making expertise available in more places, making service continuous, making insight accessible when and where it’s needed.

This adjustment in language isn’t purely cosmetic. Our words frame our reality; our words become our reality. They influence whether people lean in or pull back. When the verbs are about loss, the story becomes defensive. When the verbs are about possibility, the story becomes expansive.

Language matters. Nomenclature matters. When it comes to disruptive technology, we need to move from anxiety to action.

Trying on new verbs might be the difference that opens a door you didn’t know was there.

Rethinking AI: Pair, Accelerate, Enhance, Scale, Multiply, Extend