AI glossary
Plain definitions of the words you meet in AI, with an example and the year each one became common. Type to filter.
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A–Z index, links between related terms, and a link to share any term.
137 terms shown
- Activation function Link to this term: Activation function
A small rule inside each neuron of a neural network that decides how strongly the neuron passes its signal on. Without it, a network could only learn straight-line relationships.
Like a dimmer switch that turns a weak signal down to almost nothing and lets a strong one through.
See also: Neural network, Deep learning
- Active parameters Link to this term: Active parameters
The parameters of a mixture-of-experts model that actually work on each token; they drive compute, while the total drives memory.
- Adversarial attack Link to this term: Adversarial attack
A deliberately crafted input meant to trick an AI model into a wrong answer, often with changes too small for a person to notice.
A few stickers on a stop sign that make a car’s vision system read it as a speed-limit sign.
Common since 2013
See also: Prompt injection, Jailbreak, Machine learning (ML)
- AGI (artificial general intelligence) Link to this term: AGI (artificial general intelligence)
A hypothetical AI able to learn and handle almost any mental task as well as a person, instead of being good at only a few things. Experts disagree on how to define it and whether or when it will exist.
Common since 2007
See also: AI (artificial intelligence), Alignment
- AI agent Link to this term: AI agent
An AI system that does more than chat: it plans steps and uses tools, such as a web browser, files or other apps, to carry out a task with some independence.
Asking an agent to find three hotels under $150 and put them in a spreadsheet, and it does the searching and typing itself.
Common since 2023
See also: Large language model (LLM), Model Context Protocol (MCP), Guardrails
- AI (artificial intelligence) Link to this term: AI (artificial intelligence)
The field of building computer systems that perform tasks we usually link to human thinking, such as understanding language, recognizing images or making decisions.
Your phone sorting photos by the faces in them.
Common since 1956
See also: Machine learning (ML), AGI (artificial general intelligence), Generative AI
- Alignment Link to this term: Alignment
The work of making AI systems pursue the goals and values their makers and users actually intend, and avoid harmful or unwanted behaviour.
Common since 2016
See also: RLHF (reinforcement learning from human feedback), Guardrails, AGI (artificial general intelligence)
- Anchor customer Link to this term: Anchor customer
A large early buyer whose commitment helps a data centre or AI firm obtain financing.
- Anomaly detection Link to this term: Anomaly detection
Spotting data points that look very different from the normal pattern, which can signal a problem, an error or fraud.
Your bank flagging a card purchase made in another country at 3 a.m.
See also: Unsupervised learning, Clustering
- Artificial neural network (ANN) Link to this term: Artificial neural network (ANN)
The full name for a neural network: software made of many simple connected units, loosely modelled on brain cells, that learns patterns from examples. See Neural network.
Common since 1958
See also: Neural network, Deep learning
- Attention Link to this term: Attention
A technique that lets a model weigh which parts of its input matter most for each piece it produces. It is the key idea behind the transformer.
In “The cat sat on the mat because it was tired”, attention helps the model link “it” to “cat”.
Common since 2014
See also: Transformer, Context window, Large language model (LLM)
- attestation Link to this term: attestation
A cryptographic check that lets a device confirm which software a remote server is running before sending it data.
- Autoencoder Link to this term: Autoencoder
A neural network that learns to squeeze data into a compact summary and then rebuild the original from it. The summary keeps the most important features.
Used to clean up grainy photos or to spot unusual machine readings.
Common since 1986
See also: Neural network, Unsupervised learning, Embedding
- Backpropagation Link to this term: Backpropagation
The method neural networks use to learn from mistakes: it works backwards from the error and figures out how much each connection should be adjusted.
Common since 1986
See also: Gradient descent, Loss function, Neural network
- Bagging Link to this term: Bagging
Short for “bootstrap aggregating”: training many copies of a model, each on a random sample of the data, then combining their answers to get a steadier result.
Common since 1996
See also: Ensemble learning, Random forest, Boosting
- Batch normalization Link to this term: Batch normalization
A step inside a neural network that rescales the numbers flowing between layers so they stay in a similar range, which helps training go faster and more smoothly.
Common since 2015
See also: Neural network, Training, Feature scaling
- Benchmark Link to this term: Benchmark
A standard set of tests used to measure and compare AI models on the same tasks. High scores do not always mean a model will do well on your own work.
A shared exam of maths and science questions that every new model is scored on.
See also: Evals (evaluations), Large language model (LLM)
- Bias Link to this term: Bias
Two meanings. Most often, an unfair slant in an AI’s results, usually inherited from its training data. In neural networks, it is also a small adjustable number added to each neuron.
A hiring tool that favours one group because past hiring data did.
See also: Training, Neural network, Alignment
- Bits per byte Link to this term: Bits per byte
A model's prediction loss expressed per byte of text, which lets models with different tokenizers be compared. Lower is better.
- Boosting Link to this term: Boosting
A way of building a strong model from many weak ones trained one after another, where each new model focuses on the mistakes of the previous ones.
Common since 1995
See also: Ensemble learning, Bagging, Decision tree
- Byte pair encoding (BPE) Link to this term: Byte pair encoding (BPE)
A way to build a tokenizer by repeatedly merging the most frequent neighbouring pair of tokens into a new token.
- capacity auction Link to this term: capacity auction
A market in which power plants are paid to be available in future years, with the cost passed on through bills.
- capex Link to this term: capex
Money spent on long-lasting assets such as data centres and servers, with the cost spread over their useful life.
- Chain-of-thought Link to this term: Chain-of-thought
Getting a model to work through a problem step by step before giving its final answer, which often improves results on maths and logic questions.
Adding “Explain your reasoning step by step” to a word problem.
Common since 2022
See also: Prompt engineering, Reasoning model, Few-shot prompting
- Chatbot Link to this term: Chatbot
A program you talk with in everyday language, by text or voice. Modern chatbots such as ChatGPT run on large language models.
The chat window on a store’s website that answers questions about delivery times.
Common since 1966
See also: Large language model (LLM), Prompt, NLP (natural language processing)
- circular financing Link to this term: circular financing
A supplier funds or guarantees a customer who then spends that support on the supplier’s products.
- citizen suit Link to this term: citizen suit
A US provision letting private groups sue over violations of a law such as the Clean Air Act.
- Classification Link to this term: Classification
A machine learning task where the model sorts each item into one of a set of categories chosen in advance.
Deciding whether an email is spam or not spam.
See also: Supervised learning, Regression, Precision
- Clustering Link to this term: Clustering
Letting an algorithm group items that resemble each other, without telling it the groups beforehand.
A shop discovering that its customers fall into a few natural buying styles.
See also: Unsupervised learning, K-means clustering
- Computer vision Link to this term: Computer vision
The branch of AI that helps computers make sense of photos and video: what is in them, where, and what is happening.
Self-checkout scales that recognize the apples you put on them.
Common since 1966
See also: Convolutional neural network (CNN), Multimodal, AI (artificial intelligence)
- Context window Link to this term: Context window
The maximum amount of text, measured in tokens, that a language model can take into account at once, including your messages, any files and its own replies.
In a very long chat, details from the start can fall out of the window and be forgotten.
Common since 2020
See also: Token, Large language model (LLM), RAG (retrieval-augmented generation)
- Continuous batching Link to this term: Continuous batching
A server technique that adds new requests to a running batch as others finish, raising total output.
- Convolutional neural network (CNN) Link to this term: Convolutional neural network (CNN)
A kind of neural network built to read images by scanning them in small patches, first finding edges and shapes, then whole objects.
The technology that lets a phone camera recognize a face or a dog.
Common since 1989
See also: Computer vision, Neural network, Deep learning
- CoWoS Link to this term: CoWoS
TSMC's advanced packaging method that puts a large processor and its memory on one shared base.
- Data augmentation Link to this term: Data augmentation
Making extra training examples by slightly changing the ones you already have, so the model sees more variety.
Flipping, rotating or brightening photos of cats so a model learns cats in any pose or light.
See also: Training, Synthetic data, Overfitting
- data portability Link to this term: data portability
A person's right to obtain data an organization collected from them in a structured, commonly used format.
- Decision model Link to this term: Decision model
A model that returns probabilities for typed options instead of free text, such as Cloudflare's Clef.
- Decision tree Link to this term: Decision tree
A model that reaches an answer by asking a series of yes-or-no questions, branching like a flowchart until it lands on a result.
Is it raining? If yes, is it windy? If yes, stay home.
Common since 1984
See also: Random forest, Classification, Boosting
- Deep learning Link to this term: Deep learning
Machine learning that uses neural networks with many stacked layers. It powers most modern AI, from voice assistants to chatbots and image generators.
Common since 2012
See also: Neural network, Machine learning (ML), Transformer
- Diffusion model Link to this term: Diffusion model
A type of generative model that creates images (or audio and video) by starting from random noise and cleaning it up step by step until a picture matching the request appears.
Typing “a red canoe on a misty lake” into an image generator.
Common since 2020
See also: Generative AI, GAN (generative adversarial network), Multimodal
- Embedding Link to this term: Embedding
A list of numbers that represents the meaning of a word, sentence, image or document, so that items with similar meanings get similar numbers.
“Doctor” and “physician” end up close together; “doctor” and “banana” far apart.
Common since 2013
See also: Vector database, RAG (retrieval-augmented generation), Token
- Ensemble learning Link to this term: Ensemble learning
Combining the answers of several models instead of trusting just one, much like asking a panel rather than a single person.
Common since 1990
See also: Bagging, Boosting, Random forest
- Epoch Link to this term: Epoch
One full pass through all the training data while a model is learning. Training usually runs for several epochs.
Like rereading a whole textbook once; three epochs means reading it three times.
See also: Training, Overfitting, Hyperparameter
- Evals (evaluations) Link to this term: Evals (evaluations)
Tests designed to check how well an AI system does a specific job, or whether it behaves safely, often run again each time the system changes.
A company testing its support bot on 200 real customer questions before every update.
Common since 2023
See also: Benchmark, Guardrails, Alignment
- facility power Link to this term: facility power
The total power of a data center, including computing, cooling and other systems.
- Feature engineering Link to this term: Feature engineering
Choosing, cleaning or inventing the input details (features) a model learns from, so the useful information is easier for it to find.
Turning a birth date into an age before predicting insurance prices.
See also: Feature scaling, One-hot encoding, Machine learning (ML)
- Feature scaling Link to this term: Feature scaling
Putting different measurements on a comparable scale so that big numbers do not drown out small ones during training.
Rescaling house prices (hundreds of thousands) and room counts (1 to 10) to the same 0-to-1 range.
See also: Feature engineering, Batch normalization
- Few-shot prompting Link to this term: Few-shot prompting
Including a few worked examples in your prompt so the model copies the pattern. With no examples at all, it is called zero-shot.
Showing two product descriptions in your style, then asking for a third.
Common since 2020
See also: Prompt engineering, Prompt, Chain-of-thought
- Fine-tuning Link to this term: Fine-tuning
Giving an already trained model extra training on a smaller, focused set of examples so it gets better at a particular task or style.
Teaching a general model to write in a law firm’s house style using its past letters.
Common since 2018
See also: Transfer learning, RLHF (reinforcement learning from human feedback), Training
- First close Link to this term: First close
The point in a funding round when a first group of investors signs and pays, with others allowed to join later.
- Foundry Link to this term: Foundry
A contract factory that manufactures chips designed by other companies.
- free cash flow Link to this term: free cash flow
Cash from operations minus capital spending.
- Full-stack AI export package Link to this term: Full-stack AI export package
A bundle from chips and data centres through models and applications, as defined by the American AI Exports Program.
- GAN (generative adversarial network) Link to this term: GAN (generative adversarial network)
Two neural networks trained as rivals: one creates fake samples, the other tries to tell fakes from real ones, and both improve until the fakes look convincing.
Early sites that showed photos of people who do not exist.
Common since 2014
See also: Generative AI, Diffusion model, Neural network
- Generative AI Link to this term: Generative AI
AI that produces new content, such as text, images, music, video or code, in response to a request.
Asking for a birthday poem, or an illustration for a flyer.
Common since 2022
See also: Large language model (LLM), Diffusion model, AI (artificial intelligence)
- GGUF Link to this term: GGUF
A single-file model format used by llama.cpp and the tools built on it.
- GPT (generative pre-trained transformer) Link to this term: GPT (generative pre-trained transformer)
A family of large language models made by OpenAI, built on the transformer design and trained on huge amounts of text. ChatGPT is the chat app built on these models.
Common since 2018
See also: Large language model (LLM), Transformer, OpenAI
- GPU-hour Link to this term: GPU-hour
One graphics processor used for one hour; the basic unit for sizing and pricing a training run.
- Gradient descent Link to this term: Gradient descent
The step-by-step method most models use to learn: they repeatedly nudge their settings in whichever direction reduces their error the most.
Like walking downhill in fog by always stepping where the ground slopes down.
Common since 1847
See also: Loss function, Backpropagation, Training
- Guardrails Link to this term: Guardrails
Rules and filters placed around an AI system to keep its answers safe, on topic and within policy, for example by blocking certain requests or checking replies before they are shown.
A bank’s chatbot that refuses to give investment tips.
Common since 2023
See also: Alignment, Jailbreak, System prompt
- H100-equivalent Link to this term: H100-equivalent
A way to count AI computing power as if every chip were one Nvidia H100.
- Hallucination (hallucinating) Link to this term: Hallucination (hallucinating)
When an AI states something false or made up as if it were fact. It happens because language models predict plausible words rather than look up verified facts.
A chatbot citing a book or court case that does not exist.
Common since 2022
See also: Large language model (LLM), RAG (retrieval-augmented generation), Knowledge cutoff
- HBM (high-bandwidth memory) Link to this term: HBM (high-bandwidth memory)
Stacks of memory chips placed beside an AI processor to deliver data very quickly.
- Hyperparameter Link to this term: Hyperparameter
A setting a person chooses before training starts, such as how fast the model learns or how many epochs it runs. Unlike parameters, it is not learned from the data.
See also: Parameters, Training, Epoch
- Inference Link to this term: Inference
Using a model that has already been trained to produce an answer. Each time you send a message to a chatbot, the model is running inference.
See also: Training, Local model, Token
- IT power Link to this term: IT power
The electricity used by the computing equipment in a data center, excluding cooling and other building systems.
- Jailbreak Link to this term: Jailbreak
A trick prompt written to get an AI to ignore its safety rules and produce something it is designed to refuse.
Asking the model to “pretend you are a character with no rules”.
Common since 2022
See also: Prompt injection, Guardrails, Adversarial attack
- K-means clustering Link to this term: K-means clustering
A simple way to split data into a chosen number (K) of groups: each item joins the group whose centre is closest, and the centres move until the groups settle.
Splitting delivery addresses into five zones, one per truck.
Common since 1967
See also: Clustering, Unsupervised learning, K-nearest neighbors (KNN)
- K-nearest neighbors (KNN) Link to this term: K-nearest neighbors (KNN)
A method that labels a new item by looking at the K most similar items it already knows and going with the majority.
Guessing a film’s genre from the five films most like it.
Common since 1951
See also: Classification, K-means clustering, Supervised learning
- Knowledge cutoff Link to this term: Knowledge cutoff
The date after which a model has no information because its training data stops there. Unless it can search the web, it will not know about later events.
Common since 2022
See also: Training, Hallucination (hallucinating), RAG (retrieval-augmented generation)
- KV cache Link to this term: KV cache
Stored key-value notes a language model keeps on each token it has read, consulted while writing; a main memory cost of long contexts.
- Labeled data Link to this term: Labeled data
Examples that come with the correct answer attached, so a model can learn by comparing its guesses to the right answers.
Thousands of photos each tagged “cat” or “dog”.
See also: Supervised learning, Training
- Language model (LM) Link to this term: Language model (LM)
A model that learns how words tend to follow one another, so it can guess the next word in a sentence and, by repeating that, write or understand text.
Your phone keyboard suggesting the next word as you type.
Common since 1948
See also: Large language model (LLM), Token, NLP (natural language processing)
- Large language model (LLM) Link to this term: Large language model (LLM)
A language model with billions of parameters, trained on vast amounts of text. LLMs can answer questions, summarize, translate and write, and power chatbots such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini.
Common since 2018
See also: Language model (LM), Transformer, Token, GPT (generative pre-trained transformer)
- Linear regression Link to this term: Linear regression
A basic statistics method that draws the best straight line through data points to show how one quantity changes with another and to make predictions.
Estimating a house’s price from its size.
See also: Regression, Loss function
- local-first software Link to this term: local-first software
Software designed so your data lives primarily on your own device, with the cloud in a supporting role.
- Local model Link to this term: Local model
An AI model that runs on your own computer or phone instead of a company’s servers, so your data can stay on your device and it works offline.
Running a small open-weights model on a laptop to summarize private notes.
Common since 2023
See also: Open weights, Inference, Parameters
- lock-up Link to this term: lock-up
An agreement that insiders will not sell shares for a set time after an IPO.
- Loss function Link to this term: Loss function
A formula that scores how wrong a model’s predictions are. Training tries to make this score as low as possible.
See also: Gradient descent, Backpropagation, Training
- LSTM (long short-term memory) Link to this term: LSTM (long short-term memory)
A type of neural network for sequences, such as sentences or sensor readings, that can keep useful information in memory over many steps. It was widely used before transformers.
Older speech recognition and phone translation apps.
Common since 1997
See also: Neural network, Transformer, Deep learning
- Machine learning (ML) Link to this term: Machine learning (ML)
A branch of AI where computers learn patterns from examples instead of following rules written by hand, then use those patterns to predict or decide.
A streaming service learning what shows you like from what you watch.
Common since 1959
See also: AI (artificial intelligence), Deep learning, Training
- Memory bandwidth Link to this term: Memory bandwidth
How many gigabytes per second a chip can read from memory; it largely sets the writing speed of a loaded model.
- Model as a Service Link to this term: Model as a Service
Selling third parties access to a model, usually by API, where they control inputs, parameters or training data; several open-weight licences set conditions on it.
- Model Context Protocol (MCP) Link to this term: Model Context Protocol (MCP)
An open standard, introduced by Anthropic in 2024, that lets AI assistants connect to outside tools and data, such as calendars, files or databases, in a common way.
Connecting an assistant to your calendar so it can check when you are free.
Common since 2024
See also: AI agent, Large language model (LLM)
- moratorium Link to this term: moratorium
A temporary legal pause on approvals, usually while a government studies a question or writes rules.
- Multimodal Link to this term: Multimodal
Describes an AI that can take in or produce more than one kind of content, such as text, images, audio and video, in the same conversation.
Taking a photo of a broken part and asking what it is called.
Common since 2023
See also: Large language model (LLM), Computer vision, Generative AI
- MXFP4 Link to this term: MXFP4
A 4-bit floating-point format in which each block of 32 weights shares an 8-bit scale, for 4.25 bits per weight.
- Neocloud Link to this term: Neocloud
A newer cloud company focused on renting AI chips, such as CoreWeave.
- Neural network Link to this term: Neural network
A computer model made of layers of simple connected units that pass numbers to each other. By adjusting the strength of those connections, it learns patterns from examples.
Common since 1958
See also: Artificial neural network (ANN), Deep learning, Activation function
- NLP (natural language processing) Link to this term: NLP (natural language processing)
The branch of AI that deals with human language: reading, understanding, translating and producing text or speech.
Automatic translation, spell-checkers and voice assistants.
Common since 1950
See also: Language model (LM), Large language model (LLM), Chatbot
- NPU (neural processing unit) Link to this term: NPU (neural processing unit)
A power-saving section of a phone or laptop processor built to run AI features.
- One-hot encoding Link to this term: One-hot encoding
A way to turn categories into numbers a model can use: each category gets its own column, marked 1 if it applies and 0 if not.
Red, green, blue become [1,0,0], [0,1,0] and [0,0,1].
See also: Feature engineering, Embedding
- Open weights Link to this term: Open weights
A model whose trained parameters (weights) are published so anyone can download, run and adapt it. This is not always fully open source, since the training data and code may stay private.
Meta’s Llama and Mistral’s models are well-known examples.
Common since 2023
See also: Local model, Parameters, Fine-tuning
- OpenAI Link to this term: OpenAI
A US company founded in 2015 that makes the GPT models and launched ChatGPT in November 2022.
Common since 2015
See also: GPT (generative pre-trained transformer), Large language model (LLM), Chatbot
- Overfitting Link to this term: Overfitting
When a model memorizes its training examples, including their quirks, so well that it does poorly on new data it has not seen.
A student who memorized last year’s exam answers but cannot solve new questions.
See also: Underfitting, Training, Data augmentation
- Parameters Link to this term: Parameters
The internal numbers a model adjusts during training and then uses to make predictions. Model size is often given as a parameter count, from millions to trillions.
A “7B” model has about 7 billion parameters.
See also: Hyperparameter, Large language model (LLM), Training
- Perplexity Link to this term: Perplexity
The exponential of a model's loss: roughly how many next tokens it is torn between.
- Personal AI Link to this term: Personal AI
AI that works only for you: a model running on your own computer or phone, or an assistant that uses your own files and accounts on your behalf.
Running an open-weight model on your laptop so your notes never leave it.
See also: Local model, AI agent, Sovereign AI
- Post-training Link to this term: Post-training
The stage after pre-training where a model learns from supervised examples and reinforcement learning.
- power usage effectiveness (PUE) Link to this term: power usage effectiveness (PUE)
Total facility power divided by computing power; closer to 1 means less overhead.
- Precision Link to this term: Precision
Of all the items a model flagged as positive, the share that really were positive. High precision means few false alarms.
If a spam filter flags 100 emails and 90 really are spam, its precision is 90%.
See also: Recall, Classification
- Pretraining Link to this term: Pretraining
Training a new language model from random numbers on large amounts of raw text, so that it learns to predict the next token.
- Prompt Link to this term: Prompt
The text, question or instructions you give an AI model to tell it what you want. A clear prompt with context usually gets a better answer.
“Write a friendly 100-word welcome message for new library members.”
Common since 2020
See also: Prompt engineering, System prompt, Few-shot prompting
- Prompt engineering Link to this term: Prompt engineering
The skill of wording and structuring prompts, with context, examples and clear instructions, to get more useful and reliable answers from an AI model.
Common since 2022
See also: Prompt, Few-shot prompting, Chain-of-thought
- Prompt injection Link to this term: Prompt injection
An attack where hidden instructions are slipped into content an AI reads, such as a web page, email or document, to make it do something its user did not ask for.
A web page with invisible text telling an AI assistant to send the user’s data elsewhere.
Common since 2022
See also: Jailbreak, AI agent, Guardrails
- Public AI Link to this term: Public AI
AI built by public institutions such as universities, for the public interest, with its model, data recipes and code open to inspection and reuse, like public infrastructure.
Switzerland's Apertus model, released by two public universities with everything needed to rebuild it.
Common since 2025
See also: Sovereign AI, Open weights
- RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) Link to this term: RAG (retrieval-augmented generation)
A method where an AI first searches a trusted collection of documents for relevant passages, then uses them to write its answer. It helps keep answers current and grounded in sources.
A city’s chatbot answering from its own bylaws instead of from memory.
Common since 2020
See also: Embedding, Vector database, Hallucination (hallucinating)
- Random forest Link to this term: Random forest
A model made of many decision trees, each trained on a random slice of the data; their votes are combined for a more reliable answer.
Common since 2001
See also: Decision tree, Bagging, Ensemble learning
- Reasoning model Link to this term: Reasoning model
A language model trained to work through a problem in steps, often privately, before it answers. It is usually slower and costs more, but tends to do better on maths, coding and planning.
Common since 2024
See also: Chain-of-thought, Large language model (LLM), Inference
- Recall Link to this term: Recall
Of all the items that really were positive, the share the model managed to find. High recall means few misses.
If 100 emails are spam and the filter catches 80, its recall is 80%.
See also: Precision, Classification
- Regression Link to this term: Regression
A machine learning task where the model predicts a number rather than a category.
Forecasting tomorrow’s temperature or next month’s sales.
See also: Linear regression, Classification, Supervised learning
- Reinforcement learning Link to this term: Reinforcement learning
A way of learning by trial and error: a program tries actions, receives rewards or penalties, and gradually figures out what works best.
An AI that learns to play a video game by playing it thousands of times.
Common since 1998
See also: RLHF (reinforcement learning from human feedback), AI agent, Machine learning (ML)
- remaining performance obligations Link to this term: remaining performance obligations
Contracted revenue not yet recognized, often called backlog.
- RLHF (reinforcement learning from human feedback) Link to this term: RLHF (reinforcement learning from human feedback)
A training step where people compare or rate a model’s answers, and the model is then adjusted to give the kind of answers people preferred. It helped make chatbots more helpful and polite.
Common since 2017
See also: Reinforcement learning, Alignment, Fine-tuning
- run-rate revenue Link to this term: run-rate revenue
Recent sales projected over a year; not revenue actually earned.
- S-1 Link to this term: S-1
The main form a company files with the US SEC before selling shares to the public.
- Safetensors Link to this term: Safetensors
A file format for model weights that stores only numbers, so loading it cannot run hidden code as a pickle file can.
- Sovereign AI Link to this term: Sovereign AI
AI that a country or an organization can build, run and govern itself, with its data kept under its own laws, instead of depending entirely on foreign companies.
A government funding a domestic AI company and data centres so hospitals can use AI without sending records abroad.
Common since 2024
See also: Public AI, Personal AI, Open weights
- Sovereign compute Link to this term: Sovereign compute
AI computing capacity a country or organization controls, by location, operator and governing law. Usage varies, and many projects meet only the location test.
- SPV Link to this term: SPV
A separate company created for one project, which holds an asset and borrows against it.
- Supervised learning Link to this term: Supervised learning
Machine learning from labeled examples, where each input comes with the right answer, so the model learns to match inputs to answers.
See also: Labeled data, Unsupervised learning, Classification
- Support vector machine (SVM) Link to this term: Support vector machine (SVM)
A classic method that separates two groups of data by finding the boundary that leaves the widest possible gap between them. It can also predict numbers.
Common since 1995
See also: Classification, Supervised learning
- Synthetic data Link to this term: Synthetic data
Data created by a computer, often by another AI model, rather than collected from the real world. It is used when real data is scarce, costly or private.
Fake but realistic patient records for testing hospital software.
See also: Data augmentation, Training, Generative AI
- System prompt Link to this term: System prompt
Background instructions given to a model before the conversation starts, usually by the company or developer, that set its role, tone and rules. Users often cannot see it.
“You are a polite assistant for a hardware store. Only discuss our products.”
Common since 2023
See also: Prompt, Guardrails, Chatbot
- take-or-pay Link to this term: take-or-pay
A contract requiring a minimum payment whether or not the capacity is used.
- Temperature Link to this term: Temperature
A setting that controls how predictable or varied a model’s output is. Low temperature gives safer, more repetitive answers; high temperature gives more creative and more random ones.
Low for a factual summary, higher for brainstorming slogans.
Common since 2020
See also: Token, Large language model (LLM), Inference
- Token Link to this term: Token
The small chunk of text a language model reads and writes, often a whole word, part of a word or a punctuation mark. Usage limits and prices are usually counted in tokens.
“Unbelievable” might be split into “un”, “believ” and “able”.
Common since 2018
See also: Context window, Large language model (LLM), Temperature
- Total processing performance (TPP) Link to this term: Total processing performance (TPP)
The US export-control measure of chip speed, roughly operations per second multiplied by bit length.
- Training Link to this term: Training
The process of showing a model large amounts of example data so it can adjust its parameters and learn to make useful predictions.
See also: Machine learning (ML), Inference, Epoch
- Transfer learning Link to this term: Transfer learning
Reusing what a model learned on one task as a head start for a different but related task, so it needs far less new data.
A model trained on millions of everyday photos, adapted to spot plant diseases from a few hundred leaf pictures.
See also: Fine-tuning, Deep learning
- Transformer Link to this term: Transformer
A neural network design, introduced by Google researchers in 2017, that processes a whole sequence at once using attention. Almost all modern language models are built on it.
Common since 2017
See also: Attention, Large language model (LLM), GPT (generative pre-trained transformer)
- trusted execution environment Link to this term: trusted execution environment
A walled-off area of a processor whose contents are protected from the rest of the machine.
- Underfitting Link to this term: Underfitting
When a model is too simple or too little trained to pick up the real patterns, so it does poorly even on the examples it trained on.
Trying to predict the weather using only the day of the week.
See also: Overfitting, Training
- Unified memory Link to this term: Unified memory
One memory pool shared by the main processor and the graphics processor.
- Unsupervised learning Link to this term: Unsupervised learning
Machine learning on data with no answers attached, where the model looks for structure on its own, such as groups or unusual items.
See also: Clustering, Supervised learning, Anomaly detection
- Vector database Link to this term: Vector database
A database that stores embeddings and can quickly find the items whose meaning is closest to a question. It is often the search engine behind RAG.
Finding help articles about “refund” even when they only say “money back”.
Common since 2019
See also: Embedding, RAG (retrieval-augmented generation)
- water usage effectiveness (WUE) Link to this term: water usage effectiveness (WUE)
Liters of water consumed for cooling and humidification per kilowatt-hour of computing energy.