Back in the 1990s, AI researchers deleted the phrase "artificial intelligence" from grant proposals because the term was funding poison. They wrote "machine learning" or "informatics" instead and the same work suddenly got approved. The word has always been a branding decision. John McCarthy coined "artificial intelligence" in 1955 partly to escape Norbert Wiener's "cybernetics," which dominated the field and the funding at the time. New name, new field, new money. Then two AI winters torched…