Agentic AI
Oct 4, 2025
Action
The execution of a decision made by an AI agent to interact with and change its environment.
Example:
A smart thermostat, after reasoning that the room is too cold, takes the action of turning on the heating system.
Advanced AI
Oct 4, 2025
Activation Function
A mathematical function within a neuron that determines its output and introduces non-linearity into the model, allowing it to learn complex patterns.
Example:
Common activation functions include ReLU (Rectified Linear Unit) and Sigmoid.
AI Ethics
Oct 4, 2025
Adversarial Attack
A technique used to intentionally fool a machine learning model by providing it with deceptive input that is often indistinguishable to humans but causes the model to make a mistake.
Example:
Slightly modifying a few pixels in an image of a panda in a way that is invisible to the human eye, but causes an image recognition system to classify it as a gibbon with high confidence.
Agentic AI
Oct 4, 2025
Agent
An autonomous entity that perceives its environment through sensors and acts upon that environment through actuators to achieve its goals.
Example:
A self-driving car is an agent. Its sensors are cameras, LiDAR, and radar, and its actuators are the steering wheel, accelerator, and brakes. Its goal is to navigate safely to a destination.
Agentic AI
Oct 4, 2025
Agentic AI
A type of AI system that can operate autonomously and proactively to achieve specified goals with minimal human intervention.
Example:
A sophisticated personal assistant that can book a flight, monitor for price drops, rebook at a lower fare, and arrange ground transportation automatically.
AI Ethics
Oct 4, 2025
AI Alignment
The research area dedicated to ensuring that advanced AI systems pursue goals and behaviors that are aligned with human values and intentions.
Example:
A classic thought experiment involves an AI tasked with making paperclips; a poorly aligned AI might try to convert all matter on Earth into paperclips to maximize its goal.
Core AI Concepts
Oct 4, 2025
Algorithm
A set of rules or instructions that a computer follows to perform a specific task or solve a problem. In AI, algorithms are used to process data, learn from it, and make predictions or decisions.
Example:
The PageRank algorithm, originally used by Google, is a set of rules that determines the importance of a webpage by analyzing the quantity and quality of links to it.
Model Architecture
Oct 4, 2025
Attention Mechanism
A key component of the Transformer architecture. It allows the model to focus on specific parts of the input sequence when producing an output, similar to how a human pays attention to certain words while reading a sentence.
Example:
When translating the French sentence "Je suis étudiant" to English, the attention mechanism helps the model focus on "suis" when generating "am" and "étudiant" when generating "student".
Advanced AI
Oct 4, 2025
AUC (Area Under the Curve)
The area under the ROC curve, providing a single number summary of a model's performance. An AUC of 1.0 is a perfect model; 0.5 is no better than random guessing.
Example:
Comparing two models, the one with the higher AUC score is generally the better classifier.
Agentic AI
Oct 4, 2025
Autonomy
The ability of an AI agent to make its own decisions and take actions without direct human control.
Example:
A robotic vacuum cleaner demonstrates autonomy by navigating a room, avoiding obstacles, and returning to its charging dock without being manually controlled.