Glossary
Glossary of artificial intelligence
- AI Act
- European regulation on artificial intelligence that classifies AI uses by risk and imposes obligations, including requirements for staff AI literacy.
- AI agent
- An AI system that autonomously plans and executes multiple actions to achieve a goal, using tools such as the web, files, or applications.
- AI automation
- Use of AI to chain together repetitive tasks without manual intervention, for example classifying emails or generating reports.
- API
- Interface that allows a program to use an AI model programmatically, without using the chat interface.
- Artifact
- A Claude feature that displays generated content (documents, code, tables, small applications) in a separate panel for editing and reuse.
- Bias
- Systematic tendency of a model to favor certain ideas or groups, originating from its training data.
- Chain-of-thought prompting
- A technique that prompts the model to reason step by step before answering, improving performance on complex problems.
- ChatGPT
- OpenAI conversational assistant based on the GPT models. It is the world’s most widely used generative AI tool.
- Claude
- AI assistant developed by Anthropic, known for handling long documents, producing careful writing, and prioritizing safety.
- Context window
- The maximum amount of text (in tokens) a model can consider at once, including the conversation and attached documents.
- Copilot
- Microsoft’s AI assistant integrated into Windows and Microsoft 365 (Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams).
- Custom GPT
- A version of ChatGPT configured with custom instructions, knowledge, and tools for a specific task and shareable.
- Few-shot prompting
- A technique that includes a few examples in the prompt so the model can imitate the desired format or style.
- Fine-tuning
- Retraining an existing model with specific data to adapt it to a particular task, industry, or style.
- Gemini
- Google’s family of AI models, integrated into Google Workspace (Gmail, Docs, Drive) and Google Search.
- Generative AI
- Branch of artificial intelligence capable of creating new content (text, images, audio, code) from instructions.
- Hallucination
- An AI response that appears convincing but is false or fabricated. Always verify data, figures, and sources.
- LLM (large language model)
- AI model trained on massive amounts of text to predict and generate language. GPT, Claude and Gemini are LLMs.
- MCP (Model Context Protocol)
- Open standard created by Anthropic that enables connecting AI assistants to external applications and data sources.
- Multimodal
- Ability of a model to understand and generate multiple types of content, such as text, images, audio, or video.
- NotebookLM
- Google tool that answers questions and produces summaries or podcasts based solely on documents provided by the user.
- Project (Claude / ChatGPT)
- Workspace that groups conversations, instructions, and reference documents to maintain context for a topic or a team.
- Prompt
- Instruction or question written to a generative AI to obtain a response. A good prompt specifies the role, context, task, and expected format.
- Prompt engineering
- A set of techniques for drafting and structuring prompts to elicit more accurate, reliable, and useful responses.
- RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)
- Method that connects a model to private documents or databases so it responds using verified, up-to-date information.
- Reasoning model
- Model that spends more time 'thinking' before responding, useful for analysis, mathematics, or complex planning.
- System prompt
- Background instructions that define an AI’s behavior throughout a conversation, such as its role, tone, or rules.
- Temperature
- Parameter that controls a model's creativity: low values produce precise, consistent responses; high values produce more varied responses.
- Token
- The smallest unit of text processed by a model, roughly three quarters of a word. Model limits and pricing are measured in tokens.
- Training data
- Set of texts, images, or other content used to train a model; they determine the model's knowledge and its knowledge cutoff.
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