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AI Glossary for Students and Teachers

Every key term from our free 10-lesson AI curriculum, defined in plain language. Use it as an AI vocabulary list, a word wall, or a study guide.

Lesson 1: What is AI?

Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Technology that lets computers do tasks that usually need human intelligence.
Ethics
The study of what is right and wrong and how people should act.
Dataset
A large collection of examples used to train an AI.
Algorithm
A set of step-by-step instructions a computer follows.
AI Model
A program that has learned patterns from data and can apply them to new information.
Prediction
An AI's best guess at an answer, based on the patterns it learned.
Application
What an AI is used to do, such as computer vision or generative AI.
Functionality
How much an AI is able to do, from reactive to self-aware.

Lesson 2: How AI Works

Data
Information, such as text, images, or numbers, that an AI learns from.
Inputs
What you give an AI, like the question or text you type.
Outputs
What the AI gives back, like its written answer.
Token
A small piece of text, such as a word, part of a word, or a punctuation mark, that an AI works with.
Tokenization
Breaking text into tokens so a computer can process it.
Embedding
Turning tokens into lists of numbers so a machine can find patterns and compare meanings.
Predictions
The AI's guesses about which token is most likely to come next.
Web Scraping
Using automatic programs to copy large amounts of information from websites.
Large Language Model (LLM)
An AI trained on huge amounts of text to predict the next likely words.

Lesson 3: Deepfakes

Misinformation
False information shared by someone who believes it is true.
Disinformation
False information spread on purpose to mislead people.
Malinformation
Information based on something real that is shared to cause harm.
Synthetic Media
Images, video, or audio created or changed by AI.
Deepfake
Synthetic media that makes a real person appear to say or do something they never did.
Hallucinations
False or made-up information that an AI presents as if it were true.
Watermarking
Adding a visible or hidden mark to show that content was made by AI.
Digital Literacy
The skills to find, judge, and use information online wisely.
Generative AI
AI that creates new content, such as text, images, audio, or video.

Lesson 4: Sycophancy

Sycophancy
When an AI flatters or agrees with a user to please them, even when the user is wrong.
Chat-GPT 4o
A chatbot model whose maker rolled back an update after users found it overly flattering, a well-known example of sycophancy.
Safety Guardrails
Rules and limits built into an AI to keep it from giving harmful responses.
Neutrality
Giving balanced information without simply taking one side.
Human Feedback
When people rate an AI's answers so it learns which responses to give more often.
Validation
Being told that your feelings, ideas, or choices are right or acceptable.

Lesson 6: Art and Creativity

Generative AI
AI that creates new content, such as images, music, or text, from a prompt.
Aesthetics
The study of beauty, taste, and what makes art meaningful.
Creative Labor
The time, skill, and effort people put into making creative work.
Training Data
The large collection of existing work an AI learns patterns from.
Licensing
Getting permission from a creator, often with payment, to use their work for a specific purpose.
Authorship
Who counts as the creator of a work.
Intellectual Property (IP)
Creations of the mind, like art and inventions, that the law can protect.
Copyright
A legal right that gives the human creator of an original work control over copying and sharing it.
Plagiarism
Passing off someone else's work or ideas as your own without credit.

Lesson 7: Data Privacy

User Data
Information collected about a person as they use an app, website, or device.
Digital Footprint
The record of everything a person does and shares online.
Behavior Profiling
Combining someone's data to build a picture of their interests, habits, and likely choices.
Third Party Advertisements
Ads from outside companies that pay an app to reach users who match a certain profile.
Surveillance Capitalism
Making money by collecting, predicting, and selling access to people's behavior.
Terms of Service
The agreement a person accepts in order to use an app or website.
Privacy Policy
A document explaining what data a company collects, how it uses it, and who it shares it with.
Opt-Out / Opt-In
Opt in means choosing to allow something; opt out means choosing to stop it.
App Permissions
Settings that control what an app can access, like your camera, contacts, or location.

Lesson 8: Cheating

Cognitive Offload
Handing mental work, like remembering, calculating, or writing, to a tool so your brain does not have to do it.
Synaptic Pruning
The brain's process of trimming connections that are rarely used while strengthening the ones that are used often.
Comprehension
Truly understanding something well enough to explain it and use it, not just recognize it.
Plagiarism
Presenting someone else's work or ideas, including AI-generated work, as your own.
Academic Integrity
Being honest about your schoolwork, including how and when you used help.

Lesson 9: Practical Tools and Uses

Prompting
Writing the instructions or questions you give an AI tool to shape what it does.
Cognitive Offload
Handing mental work to a tool so your brain skips the thinking and practice.
Active Recall
A study method where you pull information out of memory, such as by quizzing yourself, instead of rereading it.
Feynman Technique
Learning by explaining a topic in simple words as if teaching someone else, then fixing the gaps you find.
Sycophancy
When an AI flatters you or agrees with you instead of giving honest feedback.
Verify
To check that information is true by comparing it with a trusted source.

Lesson 10: Looking Ahead

Industrial Revolution
A period starting in the late 1700s when machines and factories changed how goods were made and how people worked.
AI Revolution
The large changes to work and daily life happening as AI takes on mental tasks people used to do.
Automation
Using machines or software to do tasks without a person doing each step.
Administrative Work
Routine tasks that keep an organization running, like scheduling, forms, records, and common emails.
Workforce Demands
The skills and abilities employers need from workers.
AI Accessibility
Who is able to use AI tools and benefit from them.
Transferable Skills
Abilities like communication, judgment, and teamwork that are useful in many different jobs.

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