AI Glossary 2026
Your comprehensive guide to understanding AI terminology. From basic concepts to advanced techniques, find clear explanations for every term.
Categories
AI Adoption
AI in BusinessThe process of integrating AI technologies into business operations, requiring strategy, change management, and skill development.
AI Alignment
AI Ethics & SafetyThe challenge of ensuring AI systems act in accordance with human values, intentions, and ethical principles.
AI Bias
AI Ethics & SafetySystematic unfairness in AI systems caused by biased training data, flawed algorithms, or discriminatory design choices.
AI Ethics
AI Ethics & SafetyThe study of moral principles and guidelines for developing and deploying AI systems responsibly and beneficially.
AI Governance
AI Ethics & SafetyFrameworks, policies, and regulations for overseeing AI development and deployment to ensure safety and accountability.
AI Safety
AI Ethics & SafetyResearch and practices ensuring AI systems operate safely, without causing unintended harm to humans or society.
AI-First Strategy
AI in BusinessA business approach that prioritizes AI integration across all operations, products, and decision-making processes.
Algorithm
Core AI ConceptsA set of step-by-step instructions or rules that a computer follows to solve a problem or complete a task. AI algorithms enable machines to learn patterns from data.
API (Application Programming Interface)
AI Tools & PlatformsA set of protocols allowing different software applications to communicate, enabling integration of AI capabilities into products.
Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)
Core AI ConceptsA type of AI that can understand, learn, and apply knowledge across a wide range of tasks at a human level. Unlike narrow AI, AGI would possess general cognitive abilities.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Core AI ConceptsThe simulation of human intelligence processes by computer systems, including learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and language understanding.
Artificial Superintelligence (ASI)
Core AI ConceptsA hypothetical AI that surpasses human intelligence in virtually all domains, including creativity, problem-solving, and social intelligence.
Attention Mechanism
Natural Language ProcessingA technique that allows models to focus on relevant parts of input when producing output, crucial for tasks like translation and summarization.
Automation
Core AI ConceptsThe use of technology to perform tasks with minimal human intervention. AI-powered automation can handle complex decision-making processes.
AutoML
AI Tools & PlatformsAutomated Machine Learning tools that automatically select, configure, and train machine learning models with minimal human input.
Backpropagation
Machine LearningA training algorithm for neural networks that calculates gradients and adjusts weights by propagating errors backward through the network layers.
BERT
Natural Language ProcessingBidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers - a pre-trained language model that understands context from both directions for NLP tasks.
Black Box
AI Ethics & SafetyAI systems whose internal decision-making processes are opaque and difficult to interpret or explain to humans.
Chatbot
Natural Language ProcessingAn AI application that simulates human conversation through text or voice, using NLP to understand and respond to user queries.
Classification
Machine LearningA supervised learning task where the model predicts discrete categories or labels for input data, such as spam detection or image recognition.
Clustering
Machine LearningAn unsupervised learning technique that groups similar data points together based on their features without predefined labels.
Computer Vision
Computer VisionA field of AI enabling computers to interpret and understand visual information from images, videos, and the real world.
Conversational AI
AI in BusinessAI technologies enabling natural language interactions between humans and machines, powering chatbots and virtual assistants.
Convolutional Neural Network (CNN)
Machine LearningA deep learning architecture designed for processing grid-like data such as images, using convolutional layers to detect patterns and features.
Copilot
AI Tools & PlatformsAI-powered coding assistant by GitHub/Microsoft that suggests code completions, functions, and solutions based on context.
Cross-Validation
Machine LearningA technique to evaluate model performance by dividing data into multiple subsets, training on some and testing on others to prevent overfitting.
Customer 360
AI in BusinessAI-powered unified view of customer data across touchpoints, enabling personalized experiences and predictive analytics.
DALL-E
AI Tools & PlatformsOpenAI's AI system that creates realistic images and art from natural language descriptions, revolutionizing digital creativity.
Data Augmentation
Machine LearningTechniques to artificially increase training data size by creating modified versions of existing data through transformations like rotation or cropping.
Decision Tree
Machine LearningA supervised learning algorithm that makes decisions by splitting data based on feature values, creating a tree-like structure of if-then rules.
Deep Learning
Machine LearningA subset of machine learning using neural networks with multiple layers to learn complex patterns from large amounts of data automatically.
Deepfake
AI Ethics & SafetyAI-generated synthetic media that convincingly replaces one person's likeness with another, raising concerns about misinformation.
Diffusion Model
Computer VisionA generative AI model that creates images by gradually removing noise from random data, guided by learned patterns from training.
Digital Twin
AI in BusinessA virtual replica of physical assets, processes, or systems that uses AI to simulate, predict, and optimize real-world performance.
Dropout
Machine LearningA regularization technique that randomly deactivates neurons during training to prevent overfitting and improve model generalization.
Embedding
Natural Language ProcessingA dense vector representation of words, sentences, or documents that captures semantic meaning in a numerical format for machine processing.
Ensemble Learning
Machine LearningA technique that combines multiple models to produce better predictions than any single model, including methods like bagging and boosting.
Entity Recognition
Natural Language ProcessingAn NLP task that identifies and classifies named entities in text, such as people, organizations, locations, and dates.
Epoch
Machine LearningOne complete pass through the entire training dataset during model training. Multiple epochs are typically needed for convergence.
Explainability
AI Ethics & SafetyThe degree to which AI decisions can be understood by humans, essential for trust and accountability in high-stakes applications.
Face Recognition
Computer VisionAI technology that identifies or verifies individuals by analyzing facial features and patterns in images or video.
Feature Engineering
Machine LearningThe process of creating, selecting, and transforming input variables to improve machine learning model performance.
Feature Extraction
Machine LearningThe process of automatically or manually identifying relevant characteristics from raw data that can be used for machine learning.
Few-Shot Learning
Natural Language ProcessingThe ability of a model to learn new tasks from only a few examples, without extensive retraining on large datasets.
Fine-Tuning
Machine LearningThe process of taking a pre-trained model and training it further on a specific dataset to adapt it for a particular task or domain.
GAN (Generative Adversarial Network)
Computer VisionA neural network architecture with two competing networks—a generator creating data and a discriminator evaluating it—producing realistic outputs.
Generative AI
AI in BusinessAI systems that create new content—text, images, code, music—rather than just analyzing or classifying existing data.
GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer)
Natural Language ProcessingA family of large language models by OpenAI that generate human-like text by predicting the next token in a sequence.
Gradient Descent
Machine LearningAn optimization algorithm that iteratively adjusts model parameters to minimize the loss function by moving in the direction of steepest descent.
Hugging Face
AI Tools & PlatformsA platform and community for sharing machine learning models, datasets, and tools, democratizing access to AI technology.
Hyperautomation
AI in BusinessThe combination of AI, machine learning, and RPA to automate complex business processes end-to-end with minimal human intervention.
Hyperparameter
Machine LearningConfiguration settings that control the learning process, such as learning rate or number of layers, set before training begins.
Image Classification
Computer VisionA computer vision task that assigns labels or categories to entire images based on their visual content.
Image Generation
Computer VisionAI techniques that create new images from text descriptions, sketches, or other inputs, using models like diffusion or GANs.
Image Segmentation
Computer VisionDividing an image into distinct regions or segments, identifying pixel-level boundaries of objects and areas.
Intelligent Document Processing
AI in BusinessAI-powered extraction and processing of data from documents like invoices, contracts, and forms with high accuracy.
Interpretability
AI Ethics & SafetyThe ability to understand how an AI model makes predictions, crucial for debugging and building user trust.
Jupyter Notebook
AI Tools & PlatformsAn interactive computing environment for creating and sharing documents containing live code, visualizations, and narrative text.
K-Means Clustering
Machine LearningAn unsupervised learning algorithm that partitions data into K clusters by minimizing the distance between points and their cluster centers.
LangChain
AI Tools & PlatformsA framework for developing applications powered by language models, simplifying chains of prompts, memory, and tool use.
Large Language Model (LLM)
Natural Language ProcessingAI models trained on massive text datasets that can understand and generate human-like text, powering applications like ChatGPT and Claude.
Learning Rate
Machine LearningA hyperparameter that controls how much to adjust model weights during training. Too high causes instability; too low slows convergence.
Lemmatization
Natural Language ProcessingAn NLP technique that reduces words to their base dictionary form (lemma), considering context and part of speech.
Loss Function
Machine LearningA mathematical function that measures the difference between predicted and actual values, guiding the optimization of model parameters.
LSTM (Long Short-Term Memory)
Natural Language ProcessingA type of recurrent neural network designed to learn long-term dependencies, using gates to control information flow over time.
Machine Learning (ML)
Machine LearningA subset of AI where systems learn and improve from experience without being explicitly programmed, using algorithms to find patterns in data.
Machine Translation
Natural Language ProcessingAI-powered automatic translation of text or speech from one language to another, using neural networks for context-aware results.
Midjourney
AI Tools & PlatformsAn AI image generation tool that creates artistic visuals from text prompts, known for distinctive aesthetic quality.
MLOps
AI Tools & PlatformsPractices combining machine learning, DevOps, and data engineering to deploy and maintain ML models in production reliably.
Named Entity Recognition (NER)
Natural Language ProcessingAn NLP technique that identifies and classifies named entities like people, places, and organizations in unstructured text.
Natural Language Generation (NLG)
Natural Language ProcessingAI technology that converts structured data into human-readable text, used in report generation and content creation.
Natural Language Understanding (NLU)
Natural Language ProcessingA subset of NLP focused on comprehending the meaning and intent behind human language, beyond just parsing text.
Neural Network
Machine LearningA computing system inspired by biological neural networks, consisting of interconnected nodes (neurons) organized in layers that process information.
Object Detection
Computer VisionA computer vision task that identifies and locates objects within images or video, drawing bounding boxes around them.
OCR (Optical Character Recognition)
Computer VisionTechnology that converts images of text into machine-readable text, enabling digitization of printed documents.
Overfitting
Machine LearningWhen a model learns training data too well, including noise and outliers, resulting in poor performance on new, unseen data.
Perceptron
Machine LearningThe simplest type of artificial neural network, consisting of a single neuron that makes binary classifications based on weighted inputs.
Pose Estimation
Computer VisionComputer vision technique that detects human body positions and movements by identifying key body joint locations.
Pre-training
Machine LearningThe initial training phase where a model learns general features from a large dataset before being fine-tuned for specific tasks.
Predictive Analytics
AI in BusinessUsing AI and statistical techniques to analyze historical data and predict future outcomes, trends, and behaviors.
Process Mining
AI in BusinessAI-driven analysis of event logs to discover, monitor, and improve business processes based on actual execution data.
Prompt
Natural Language ProcessingThe input text or instructions given to an AI model to guide its response or generation, crucial for directing LLM outputs.
Prompt Engineering
Natural Language ProcessingThe practice of designing and optimizing prompts to elicit desired responses from AI models, improving output quality and relevance.
PyTorch
AI Tools & PlatformsAn open-source machine learning framework popular for research and production, known for dynamic computation graphs and Python integration.
RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)
Natural Language ProcessingA technique combining retrieval systems with generative models to provide accurate, up-to-date responses grounded in external knowledge.
Random Forest
Machine LearningAn ensemble learning method that builds multiple decision trees and combines their predictions for improved accuracy and robustness.
Recommendation Engine
AI in BusinessAI systems that suggest relevant content, products, or actions to users based on their behavior and preferences.
Recurrent Neural Network (RNN)
Machine LearningA neural network architecture designed for sequential data, where connections form cycles allowing information to persist across time steps.
Regression
Machine LearningA supervised learning task where the model predicts continuous numerical values, such as price prediction or temperature forecasting.
Regularization
Machine LearningTechniques to prevent overfitting by adding penalties to the loss function, such as L1 (Lasso) or L2 (Ridge) regularization.
Reinforcement Learning
Machine LearningA learning paradigm where agents learn optimal actions through trial and error, receiving rewards or penalties based on their decisions.
Responsible AI
AI Ethics & SafetyDeveloping AI with consideration for ethics, fairness, transparency, privacy, and societal impact throughout its lifecycle.
RPA (Robotic Process Automation)
AI in BusinessSoftware robots that automate repetitive, rule-based tasks by mimicking human interactions with digital systems.
Self-Attention
Natural Language ProcessingA mechanism allowing models to weigh the importance of different parts of an input sequence relative to each other for better context understanding.
Semantic Search
Natural Language ProcessingSearch technology that understands the meaning and intent behind queries, not just keyword matching, for more relevant results.
Sentiment Analysis
Natural Language ProcessingAn NLP technique that determines the emotional tone or opinion expressed in text, classifying it as positive, negative, or neutral.
Stable Diffusion
Computer VisionAn open-source deep learning model that generates detailed images from text descriptions using latent diffusion techniques.
Stemming
Natural Language ProcessingAn NLP technique that reduces words to their root form by removing suffixes, simpler but less accurate than lemmatization.
Stop Words
Natural Language ProcessingCommon words like "the," "is," and "at" that are often filtered out in NLP preprocessing as they carry little semantic meaning.
Supervised Learning
Machine LearningA machine learning approach where models learn from labeled training data, with known input-output pairs guiding the learning process.
Text Classification
Natural Language ProcessingAn NLP task that assigns predefined categories or labels to text documents, used in spam detection and topic categorization.
Text Summarization
Natural Language ProcessingAI-powered condensation of long documents into shorter versions while preserving key information and meaning.
Token
Natural Language ProcessingThe basic unit of text processed by language models, which can be a word, part of a word, or punctuation mark.
Tokenization
Natural Language ProcessingThe process of breaking text into smaller units (tokens) for processing by NLP models, essential for text analysis.
Transfer Learning
Machine LearningA technique where a model trained on one task is repurposed for a different but related task, reducing training time and data requirements.
Transformer
Machine LearningA neural network architecture using self-attention mechanisms to process sequential data in parallel, forming the basis of modern language models.
Underfitting
Machine LearningWhen a model is too simple to capture the underlying patterns in data, resulting in poor performance on both training and test data.
Unsupervised Learning
Machine LearningA machine learning approach where models find patterns in unlabeled data without predefined outputs, discovering hidden structures.
Variance (in ML)
Machine LearningThe sensitivity of a model to fluctuations in training data. High variance leads to overfitting; low variance may cause underfitting.
Vector Database
Natural Language ProcessingA database optimized for storing and querying high-dimensional vectors (embeddings), enabling fast similarity search for AI applications.
Virtual Assistant
AI in BusinessAI-powered software that performs tasks or services based on voice or text commands, like Siri, Alexa, or Google Assistant.
Weight
Machine LearningNumerical parameters in neural networks that are adjusted during training to minimize prediction errors and improve model accuracy.
Word2Vec
Natural Language ProcessingA neural network model that learns word embeddings by predicting words from context, capturing semantic relationships in vector space.
XAI (Explainable AI)
AI Ethics & SafetyAI systems designed to provide clear explanations of their decisions and predictions in human-understandable terms.
YOLO (You Only Look Once)
Computer VisionA real-time object detection algorithm that processes images in a single pass, making it fast enough for video applications.
Zero-Shot Learning
Natural Language ProcessingThe ability of a model to perform tasks it was not explicitly trained on, using general knowledge to handle new categories.
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