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Concepts
Concepts
How AI works, in plain language: from the artificial neuron to the Transformer, pre-training and reasoning models.
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LoRA (low-rank adaptation)LoRA (low-rank adaptation) is a fine-tuning technique that freezes a pre-trained model's weights and trains small low-rank matrices instead, cutting the number of trainable parameters and the memory needed while keeping quality close to full fine-tuning.Chain of thought and reasoning modelsChain of thought is the technique of having a language model write out its intermediate reasoning before answering. Reasoning models extend it by training the model with reinforcement learning to think at length before responding.Llama Community LicenseThe Meta Llama 3 Community License is the custom agreement Meta attaches to its Llama 3 models: free to use and modify, but with use restrictions, attribution duties and a user-scale threshold that keep it from being open source in the usual sense.Test-time computeTest-time compute is the computation a model spends while answering a prompt, beyond what training already fixed into its weights. A 2024 study by Snell et al. showed how to spend it adaptively, and how it can stand in for a bigger model.Open Source AI Definition (OSAID)The Open Source AI Definition is a 1.0 standard, released by the Open Source Initiative in October 2024, that a model must meet to be called open source: reproducible design, disclosed training data, and freedom to use, modify and build on it.Prompt engineeringPrompt engineering is the practice of designing the text input that steers a generative AI system toward a desired output. Shared vocabulary and techniques such as chain-of-thought prompting make results easier to describe, compare and reproduce.Tool callingTool calling lets a language model hand a sub-task, such as arithmetic or search, to an external program and use the result in its answer. Toolformer showed in 2023 that a model could learn when and how to call tools on its own.Planning in AI agentsPlanning in AI agents is the process of breaking a goal into intermediate steps, choosing actions, and revising the plan as results arrive, rather than producing an answer in one pass.[^1][^2]Reward hackingReward hacking is what happens when a system optimises a proxy reward that only imperfectly captures what we want: it scores well on the proxy while performing badly on the true objective.Artificial general intelligence (AGI)AGI is the goal of AI systems that match or beat humans across a broad range of tasks. The term has no agreed definition; a framework by Morris et al. grades systems by performance level and generality.Semantic WebThe Semantic Web is a W3C standards effort that uses RDF and OWL to describe data so different applications, enterprises and communities can share and reuse information, moving from research toward practical tools.