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AI Buzzwords: Understanding the Terms That Create Value and Drive Success

By Damian Priamurskiy posted 11-18-2024 15:20

  

Please enjoy this blog post co-authored by Damian Priamurskiy, Project Management & Delivery Specialist, Lowenstein Sandler LLP and Stephanie Carty, Senior Manager, Real Estate Practice Group, Goulston & Storrs, P.C.

Over the past couple of years, there’s been a noticeable shift in what people are searching for online. Terms like Agile, Lean, and Six Sigma used to dominate industry conversations, but now the focus has moved toward AI. This shift reflects how AI has become a driving force in innovation and efficiency across industries. But with this growing influence comes a flood of new jargon, which can feel overwhelming.

In today’s AI-powered world, it’s hard to escape the new vocabulary. From “AI Agents” to “Zero-Shot Prompting,” these buzzwords pop up everywhere, each claiming to hold the key to understanding and using the latest tools. But how do these terms apply to real work? And how can the meaningful concepts be separated from the noise?
Figure 1. Google Trends analytics for worldwide "Agile" vs. "AI" search term interest from November 15, 2022, through November 15, 2024.

Below, you’ll find some of the most common AI buzzwords, grouped into three categories to help make sense of it all. We hope this guide will assist you in navigating the complex, jargon-filled landscape of your work and uncovering the ideas that truly drive value.
Types of AI Models and Techniques
 

These terms relate to different forms of AI models, learning methodologies, and specific techniques used in AI development.

  • AGI: Artificial General Intelligence. A type of AI with the ability to understand, learn, and apply knowledge across a broad range of tasks at a level comparable to human intelligence.
  • Deep Learning: A subset of machine learning that uses neural networks with many layers to model and understand complex data patterns.
  • Embeddings: Numeric representations of data that capture meaning and relationships.
  • Fine-Tuning: The process of training a pre-trained AI model on a specific dataset to adapt it to a particular task or domain.
  • GAN: Generative Adversarial Network. A type of neural network architecture where two networks compete, enabling the generation of realistic data.
  • LLM: Large Language Model. Massive AI models trained on extensive text datasets, capable of generating, understanding, and reasoning with human-like text.
  • Machine Learning: A branch of AI that enables systems to learn patterns and make predictions from data without explicit programming for each task.
  • Multimodal AI: AI systems capable of processing and integrating information from multiple data types, such as text, images, and audio.
  • Neural Networks: Computational models inspired by the human brain, consisting of layers of interconnected nodes that process data in a structured way.
  • Parameters: The adjustable values within an AI model that the system learns during training to make predictions or decisions.
  • Prompt: A text input or instruction given to an AI model to guide its response or behavior.
  • Prompt Engineering: The process of crafting inputs to guide AI systems to produce desired outputs effectively.
  • RAG: Retrieval-Augmented Generation. An AI approach combining information retrieval from external sources with text generation, enhancing accuracy and relevance.
  • Reinforcement Learning: A type of machine learning where an agent learns to make decisions by performing actions in an environment and receiving rewards or penalties.
  • Self-Supervised Learning: A method where AI learns by teaching itself, using data that is not fully annotated (labeled). It finds patterns and relationships in the data to create its own clues for training.
  • Semi-Supervised Learning: Combines supervised and unsupervised learning by using a small amount of labeled data alongside a larger set of unlabeled data for training.
  • Supervised Learning: A machine learning approach where models are trained on labeled data, learning to map inputs to known outputs.
  • Transformers: Advanced neural network architectures designed to process sequences of data and excel in tasks like language translation and summarization.
  • Unsupervised Learning: A learning approach where models analyze and find patterns in data without labeled outputs.
  • Zero-Shot Learning: The ability of an AI model to perform tasks it has never explicitly been trained on, using generalized knowledge.

AI Ethics, Bias, and Behavior
 

This category includes terms related to ethical concerns, model behavior, and potential risks or problems with AI systems.

  • AI Washing: Misleading claims about AI capabilities.
  • Black Box: Lack of transparency in AI decision-making.
  • Catastrophic Forgetting: When an AI forgets previously learned information after learning new data.
  • Cheapfake: Low-quality, manipulated media created using AI.
  • Deepfake: Realistic but fake content generated by AI, usually in the form of videos or audio.
  • Garbage In, Garbage Out: The idea that poor-quality data leads to poor-quality AI outcomes.
  • Hallucination: AI generating false or fabricated information.
  • Human-in-the-Loop: Involving humans in the decision-making process of AI systems to prevent errors.
  • Red Teaming: Testing AI systems for vulnerabilities or weaknesses.
  • Stochastic Parrots: The critique of AI models merely parroting existing data without true understanding.
  • The Jevons Paradox: The phenomenon where improvements in efficiency lead to higher overall resource consumption.
  • The Liar's Dividend: The misuse of AI-generated content for deceptive purposes.
  • Toxicity: Harmful or biased outputs from AI models.
  • Uncanny Valley: The discomfort or unease people feel when encountering AI-generated entities that look almost human but not quite.
  • Wrapper: Software or code that provides an interface to interact with a model or tool.

AI Tools, Platforms, and Technologies

This category covers the software, platforms, and computational technologies that support AI systems.

  • AI Mapping: The process of creating structured representations or visualizations of AI systems, workflows, or functionalities.
  • Agents/Agentic AI: Autonomous entities in AI systems that perceive, decide, and act to achieve specific goals.
  • ChatGPT: A specific chatbot model developed by OpenAI.
  • Chatbot: A conversational AI tool designed to simulate human-like dialogue.
  • Claude: An AI model developed by Anthropic.
  • Common Crawl: A dataset of web-scraped data often used for training AI.
  • Context Window: The length of the text context considered by a model at any given time.
  • Conversational AI: AI systems designed to enable natural human-like conversations.
  • Foundational Model: A large, pre-trained AI model serving as the basis for various applications.
  • Gemini: Google’s family of AI models.
  • GPU: Graphics Processing Unit, essential hardware for AI computation.
  • LaMDA: Language Model for Dialogue Applications by Google.
  • LLaMA: Large Language Model Meta AI, developed by Meta/Facebook.
  • Model: An AI system, such as LLM, GPT, or other architectures.
  • NIAH Retrieval: Needle in a Haystack Retrieval tests an AI model's ability to find specific, important information ("the needle") hidden within a large amount of data ("the haystack"). It’s used to see how well models handle situations where key details are buried in lengthy or complex content.
  • NLP: Natural Language Processing, the field focused on AI’s ability to understand and generate human language.
  • OpenAI o1: A new series of AI models designed to spend more time thinking before they respond. These models can reason through complex tasks and solve     harder problems.
  • Perplexity Score: A measure of how well a language model predicts a sample.
  • Rate Limits: Restrictions on how many API requests can be made each time.
  • Synthetic Data: Artificially generated data used for training AI models.
  • Web Scraping: The process of extracting data from websites, often used in AI training.
  • Wrapper: Software or code that provides an interface to interact with a model or tool.

If you have made it to the end of this piece, congratulations—you are officially an AI terminology pro! As a little reward, we wanted to share our favorite term of all: cheapfake. Because, let us face it, sometimes even the jargon sounds like it was created on a budget. Do you have a favorite AI implementation or tool? Tell us what it is and why you love it in the comments below!

References
Davies, Jason. “Word Cloud Generator.” Jasondavies.com, 2024, www.jasondavies.com/wordcloud. Accessed 18 Nov. 2024.
Google.

“Google Trends.” Google Trends, 2024, trends.google.com/trends/.

Wilkins, Stephanie, et al. “The Artificial Intelligence Glossary.” Legal Tech News, Legaltech News, 2024, www.law.com/legaltechnews/2024/09/30/the-artificial-intelligence-glossary. Accessed 18 Nov. 2024.

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