Research Guides: Artificial Intelligence (AI): Key Terms

Key Terms

"In the chrysalis, you turn the caterpillar into soup—and from this soup you build the butterfly. ... It started as one thing, and it’s become something else." - Geoffrey Hinton


Term	Definition
Artificial Intelligence (AI)	Technology that enables computers and machines to simulate human learning, comprehension, problem solving, decision making, creativity and autonomy.
Artificial Generative Intelligence (AGI)	Also known as super intelligence. A hypothetical stage in the development of machine learning in which an artificial intelligence system can match or exceed the cognitive abilities of human beings across any task. It represents the fundamental, abstract goal of AI development: the artificial replication of human intelligence in a machine or software.
Generative AI	A type of artificial intelligence that can learn from and mimic large amounts of data and data patterns to create content such as text, images, music, videos, code and more, based on inputs or prompts.
Machine Learning	The capability of a machine to imitate intelligent human behavior.
Neural Networks	Computing systems inspired by the human brain; algorithms that train on large data sets (such as Large Language Models) over and over in order to detect patterns and relationships and continually improve
Deep Learning	Layered neural networks that "weight" certain categories. You can see these at work in facial recognition systems which use different analysis categories (face shape, skin color, etc.).
Large Language Model (LLM)	Neural networks that work by forecasting word sequences, capable of understanding and generating natural language and other types of content.
Natural Language Processing	Heavy utilized for things like ChatGPT. Branch of machine learning where AI can understand human language and generate natural-sounding responses based on human speech.
Hallucination	Occurrences where Large Language Models generate factually inaccurate or illogical answers due to data and architecture constraints.

See MIT Sloan Teaching & Learning Technologies' Glossary of Terms: Generative AI Basics and IBM's "What is artificial intelligence (AI)?" for more terms and definitions.