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AI is upon us. Here’s all the Lingo you need

at least right now

Arthur Gaplanyan

AI artwork

When was the last time you heard somebody talk about AI? Has it been all of 10 minutes yet?

Artificial Intelligence is all the rage right now, and it’s the topic at hand from content creators to investors.

You probably haven’t thought about it before, but AI is already all around us. It’s integrated into our daily lives quite deeply. It might be the predictive text in your last SMS message or you asking Alexa to turn on some smooth jazz. It’s there. You use it frequently.

But things have really blown up in the past 2 months. Open-AI’s release of ChatGPT and DALL-E have really brought powerful AI to the forefront of people’s minds. They have been able to take the concepts to the next level, generating responses from natural conversation to impart knowledge, create programming code, design artwork, and a zillion other ways people have found to make it useful in their lives. The cover photo of this blog post was created by DALL-E.

Emerging technology, especially disruptive technology, always launches with a wave of new lingo and terms that eventually incorporate into our daily lives. Just think about your phone and what people say to message somebody. Maybe they say they will “text” them. Common in business communications they say they will “ping” them. But “text” just means words and most people I’ve heard say “ping” have never typed that in DOS or a command prompt before.

One of our employees finally adopted the word “app.” Yeah, people have been calling them applications since the introduction of the first iPhone 16 years ago. He always called them programs though. Some dogs take longer to learn new tricks, I guess.

That is my point though. It’s not odd to say that somebody will “text” you on an “app.” These are words we use in our vocabulary daily. So much so that talking about it sounds a bit odd and awkward.

That’s exactly what we expect to happen with AI.

Experts believe that AI is becoming the new foundational core of a new world of technology. It will redefine how we interact with computers of all kinds, and to some extent each other. Along with it, a whole new smorgasbord of lingo will emerge with it.

To help you navigate this transition, we’ve put together a list of lingo being thrown around right now.

Here are some of the current terms being used and what they mean.

Chatbot

A chatbot is a program that simulates human-to-human interaction. You can interact with a chatbot by simply talking normally. It will respond the way you interact with it. One of the coolest parts about chatbots are their ability to stay on topic in a conversation. When you ask follow up questions, it knows you are still talking about the same topic, and its responses are applicable. ChatGPT is the chatbot lighting up the internet right now. Give it a try if you haven’t already, you’ll be impressed.

Deep Learning

This refers to the method of learning to simulate how the human brain works. To react to inquiries, modern search tools and systems use pre-programmed algorithms. In order to respond in a human-like manner, AI technologies are trained on real-world concepts and conversations.

Machine Intelligence

This is a general term for machine learning, deep learning, and traditional algorithms. It’s really the source of the concept that a machine can think and learn. This is where questioning if artificial intelligence will overtake humans at some point comes from. (Just be on the lookout for a company called Skynet)

Natural Language Understanding (NLU)

NLU refers to the process of making machines understand the meaning of what we say. People speak with different levels of vocabulary, slang, regional accents and spellings. NLU bridges that gap.

Weak AI

This refers to a kind of AI that is non-sentient and usually concentrates on a single or restricted range of tasks. All of the current AI in use is Weak AI.

On the other side, Strong AI aims to create systems that are just as smart and capable as the human mind. That just hasn’t happened yet.

Trust us, this is just the tip of the iceberg. You’re going to be hearing more and more about AI as the year rolls on, and in the next few years as it becomes implemented in our lives more. We’ll be there along the way, keeping you up to date and in touch with current events.