It's also the name of a k8s thing: https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/workloads/pods/sidecar-c...

And AIDE is also the name for an Android IDE or an Advanced Intrusion Detection Environment

In my previous life at Facebook, I worked on the infra team and worked on a cluster manager similar to kubernetes, thats where I first heard the term sidecar. Something about the concept of a binary running alongside the pod powering other related things felt strong. In most parts this is the inspiration for naming the AI brain: sidecar

I believe I get the metaphor. Why is it confusing?

Overloading the term with a second technological meaning.

Unfortunately, there are a distinctly limited number of words that can communicate a particular concept - the pigeon-hole principle suggests duplication will be inevitable.

Ambiguity's only really a problem when the same term is used multiple ways in similar contexts. I think it's very unlikely that anyone will get confused between these two usages.

So what? Just because Apple calls something retina "display" means that others cannot call stuff displays.

read it as sAIDEcar