I don't follow JAI but maybe Jonathan Blow should try zig, it's a great fit for game development and I remember him mentioning that he wants a language that is fun to write in.

zig is following pretty much different path from jai afaik. zig prefers everything explicit and is very verbose whereas jai has many implicit things and also has macros or something similar. Anyways, more will be seen when it is released.

Maybe you can enlighten me, but from my view it seems the biggest difference is that zig exists and jai doesnt (yet?); at least for practical purposes.

Blow is pretty familiar with Zig, there has been some collaboration between the two creators.

There's still zero evidence that the compiler or language ever have been or ever will be called "Jai," aside from the fact that it is the tenuous file extension being used in development streams.

It's the best short name we can use right now so it's the one we should use IMO. If it gets a different name, we'll start calling it differently, I don't mind.