Most AI terms are unnecessarily academic, with everyday equivalents. Reframing it helps you remember it’s best just to pretend it’s a person to better understand and adopt it.
| AI Term | Normal Word | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| hallucination | making stuff up | something we humans do from time to time |
| prompt | thought | can’t help but have em |
| prompt engineering | communication | clearly convey what you want |
| system prompt | ||
| (custom) instructions | personality | a prompt included before a convo with an AI, steering its personality and giving it specific knowledge |
| reasoning | take it’s time | reasoning abilities let AI take some time to think, search, and review their work |
| LLM (Large Language Model) | chatbot, AI | the latest iteration of AI (though vision and audio capabilities bring them beyond just “language”) |
| multimodal | read, hear, see | can input |