Perhaps more than any other area, changing technology generally brings with it a slew of new acronyms and terms. We have things like HTML, DNS, SEO, HTTP, PHP and dozens of others that are used nearly every day in tech-related fields.
The explosion of AI is bringing a new set of words and acronyms for us to learn. Now we have “GPT”, “prompt engineering”, along with common words that now take on new meanings like “hallucination” and “jailbreak”.
The BBC recently put out a great article that breaks down all of these new terms and what they mean. They frame their article as follows:
Artificial intelligence is arguably the most important technological development of our time – here are some of the terms that you need to know as the world wrestles with what to do with this new technology.
Imagine going back in time to the 1970s, and trying to explain to somebody what it means “to google”, what a “URL” is, or why it’s good to have “fibre-optic broadband”. You’d probably struggle.
For every major technological revolution, there is a concomitant wave of new language that we all have to learn… until it becomes so familiar that we forget that we never knew it.
That’s no different for the next major technological wave – artificial intelligence. Yet understanding this language of AI will be essential as we all – from governments to individual citizens – try to grapple with the risks, and benefits that this emerging technology might pose.
I’m fairly immersed in AI, but there were still a good number of items on this list that I wasn’t familiar with. Wherever you might be related to AI, this article is likely a good one to help take you a few steps further, and I encourage you to check it out.
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