[ZpJuUuNaQ5]

Well, I don't know anything about marketing and you might have a point, but the severity of impact of these two words is clearly very different, so it doesn't look like a good comparison to me. It would raise quite a few eyebrows and more if, for example, someone released a Linux distro named "Auschwitz OS", meanwhile, even in the software world, there are multiple products that incorporate the word prism in various ways[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]. I don't believe that an average user encountering the word "prism" immediately starts thinking about NSA surveillance program.

[1] https://www.prisma.io/

[2] https://prism-pipeline.com/

[3] https://prismppm.com/

[4] https://prismlibrary.com/

[5] https://3dprism.eu/en/

[6] https://www.graphpad.com/features

[7] https://www.prismsoftware.com/

[8] https://prismlive.com/en_us/

[9] https://github.com/Project-Prism/Prism-OS

[vladms]

I think the ideas was to try to explain why is a problem to choose something, it is not a comparison of the intensity / importance.

I am not sure you can make an argument of "other people are doing it too". Lots of people do things that it is not in their interest (ex: smoking, to pick the easy one).

As others mentioned, I did not have the negative connotation related to the word prism either, but not sure how could one check that anyhow. It is not like I was not surprised these years about what some other people think, so who knows... Maybe someone with experience in marketing could explain how it is done.

[adammarples]

But without the extremity of the Auschwitz example, it suddenly is not a problem. Prism is an unbelievably generic word and I had not even heard of the Snowdon one until now nor would I remember it if I had. Prism is one step away from "Triangle" in terms of how generic it is.

[helsinkiandrew]

And of course The prism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prism_(optics)

I remember the NSA Prism program, but hearing prism today I would think first of Newton, optics, and rainbows.

[bicepjai]

When you’re as high profile as OpenAI, you don’t get judged like everyone else. People scrutinize your choices reflexively, and that’s just the tax of being a famous brand: it amplifies both the upsides and the blowback.

Most ordinary users won’t recognize the smaller products you listed, but they will recognize OpenAI and they’ll recognize Snowden/NSA adjacent references because those have seeped into mainstream culture. And even if the average user doesn’t immediately make the connection, someone in their orbit on social media almost certainly will and they’ll happily spin it into a theory for engagement.