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Poppulo’s AI Jargon Buster

Lost in the AI Lingo?

Here’s your cheat sheet to bots, buzzwords & brainy tech, made simple for internal comms pros.

A-Z AI Jargon Buster

A

  • Agentic AI AI systems that can autonomously plan, decide, and act toward specific goals, using memory, reasoning, and tools—often with minimal human oversight.

  • Algorithm A set of instructions or rules that a computer follows to solve a problem or perform a task.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) Technology that enables machines to perform tasks that typically require human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, and decision-making.

  • Automation The use of technology to perform tasks without human intervention, often to increase speed, accuracy, and efficiency.

B

  • Bias in AI When AI makes unfair or skewed decisions due to flaws in the data it was trained on.

  • Big Data Extremely large datasets that are analyzed by AI to identify patterns, trends, or insights.

C

  • Chatbot An AI program designed to mimic human conversation via text or voice.

  • Computer Vision A field of AI that enables machines to interpret and understand visual information like photos and videos.

D

  • Deep Learning A subset of machine learning that uses layered neural networks to model complex patterns in large amounts of data.

  • Data Labeling The process of tagging data (like images or text) with relevant categories so AI can learn from it.

E

  • Edge AI AI that processes data on local devices (like phones or sensors) instead of relying on cloud servers.

  • Ethical AI The practice of designing and using AI systems in ways that are fair, transparent, accountable, and aligned with human values.

  • Explainable AI (XAI) AI systems designed to make their decisions and behavior understandable to humans.

F

  • Fine-Tuning Adjusting a pre-trained AI model using more specific data to improve its performance on a particular task.

  • Foundation Model A large, general-purpose AI model (like a large language model) that can be adapted for many different tasks.

G

  • GenAI (Generative AI) AI models that can create new content—text, images, music—based on patterns learned from existing data.

  • Generative AI AI that produces original content by analyzing and replicating learned patterns.

H

  • Hallucination (in AI) When an AI confidently produces information that is false, misleading, or made-up.

  • Human-in-the-Loop An approach where humans are involved in training, monitoring, or correcting AI to ensure better outcomes.

I

  • Inference The stage when an AI model uses what it has learned to make predictions or decisions.

  • Intelligent Agent An autonomous entity that perceives its environment and takes actions to achieve specific goals.

J

  • Jupyter Notebook A tool often used by data scientists to write and test Python code, especially for AI and ML tasks.

K

  • Knowledge Graph A structured representation of information that helps AI understand relationships between concepts or entities.

L

  • Large Language Model (LLM) A type of AI trained on vast text data to understand and generate human-like language (e.g., ChatGPT).

  • Labelled Data Data that includes tags or categories used to train supervised AI models.

M

  • Machine Learning (ML) A branch of AI where machines learn from data to improve their performance over time without being explicitly programmed.

  • Model A trained algorithm that can analyze data and make predictions or decisions.

N

  • Natural Language Processing (NLP) The ability of computers to understand, interpret, and generate human language.

  • Neural Network A type of AI model inspired by the human brain, made up of layers of nodes (neurons) that process data.

O

  • Overfitting When an AI model performs well on training data but fails to generalize to new, unseen data.

P

  • Prompt Engineering Crafting inputs (prompts) in a way that helps an AI model produce better or more accurate responses.

  • Pre-training The initial training phase where an AI model learns general patterns from large amounts of data.

Q

  • Quantization A technique that reduces the size of AI models to make them faster and more efficient, especially on mobile or edge devices.

R

  • Reinforcement Learning A method where an AI learns through trial and error, receiving rewards or penalties based on its actions.

  • Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) A method where AI looks up external information (e.g., from documents) before generating a response.

S

  • Supervised Learning A machine learning approach where models are trained on labeled examples.

  • Synthetic Data Artificially generated data used to train or test AI models when real data is unavailable or sensitive.

T

  • Training Data The dataset used to teach an AI model how to recognize patterns or make decisions.

  • Turing Test A test of a machine's ability to exhibit behavior indistinguishable from a human.

U

  • Unsupervised Learning A machine learning approach where models find patterns in data without labels or explicit instruction.

  • Underfitting When a model is too simple to capture patterns in data, resulting in poor performance.

V

  • Vector Embedding A way to represent words or concepts as numerical vectors so AI can compare and understand their meaning.

W

  • Weights The numerical values in a neural network that determine how data is processed and influence model predictions.

X

  • Explainability (XAI) How understandable an AI’s decisions are to humans. Critical in high-stakes applications like healthcare or finance.

Y

  • YOLO (You Only Look Once) A popular real-time object detection algorithm used in computer vision.

Z

  • Zero-Shot Learning When an AI performs a task without having seen any labeled examples during training, based on generalization from related data.