**agent**: A person or thing (it can be a chemical or even a form of energy) that plays some role in getting something done.
**artificial intelligence**: A type of knowledge-based decision-making exhibited by machines or computers. The term also refers to the field of study in which scientists try to create machines or computer software capable of intelligent behavior.
**arXiv**: A website that posts research papers — often before they are formally published — in the fields of physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance and statistics. Anyone can read a posted paper at no charge.
**autonomous**: Acting independently. Autonomous vehicles, for instance, pilot themselves based on instructions that have been programmed into their computer guidance system.
**bot**: (short for web robot) A computer program designed to appear that its actions come from some human. The goal is to have it interact with people or perform automated tasks such as finding and sharing online information through social-media accounts.
**browser**: (in computing) The software program or application that someone uses to find and retrieve information from Web pages on the internet.
**chatbot**: A computer program created to seemingly converse with human users. Modern ones (such as Siri, Alexa, Ocelot and Sprinklr) can retrieve information over the internet about news events or classroom topics. Many even work as digital assistants to answer questions about purchases, products or scheduling on behalf of stores, pharmacies or banks.
**cloud**: (in computing) A network of computers (hardware), known as servers, which are connected to the internet. They can be used to store data and computer programs (software) that can be accessed by one or many people at once, and from anywhere in the world.
**coding**: (in computing) A term for developing computer programming — or software — that performs a particular, desired computational task.
**development**: (in engineering) The growth or change of something from an idea to a prototype.
**engine**: (in computer science) A computer program that performs a particular, narrow range of functions.
**environment**: The sum of all of the things that exist around some organism or the process and the condition those things create. Environment may refer to the weather and ecosystem in which some animal lives, or, perhaps, the temperature and humidity (or even the placement of things in the vicinity of an item of interest).
**ethics**: (adj. ethical) A code of conduct for how people interact with others and their environment. To be ethical, people should treat others fairly, avoid cheating or dishonesty in any form and avoid taking or using more than their fair share of resources (which means, to avoid greed). Ethical behavior also would not put others at risk without alerting people to the dangers beforehand and having them choose to accept the potential risks. Experts who work in this field are known as ethicists.
**field**: An area of study, as in: _Her field of research is biology_. Also a term to describe a real-world environment in which some research is conducted, such as at sea, in a forest, on a mountaintop or on a city street. It is the opposite of an artificial setting, such as a research laboratory.
**innovation**: (v. to innovate; adj. innovative) An adaptation or improvement to an existing idea, process or product that is new, clever, more effective or more practical.
**large language model**: (in computing) Language models are a type of machine learning. They attempt to predict upcoming words (in text or speech) and then present those predictions using words that almost anyone should understand. The models learn to do this by reviewing large quantities of text or speech. As their name would imply, large language models train using enormous troves of data. They organize and make sense of those data using “neural nets” — a scheme patterned a bit off of the pathways of nerves in the human brain (and for whose development the 2024 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded). Large language models don’t just learn words, but also phrases made of many words. They can even learn from the _context_ in which a new phrase and idea is worded (meaning the words that accompany those phrases or in which those phrases have been embedded).
**model**: A simulation of a real-world event (usually using a computer) that has been developed to predict one or more likely outcomes. Or an individual that is meant to display how something would work in or look on others.
**podcast**: A digital audio or video series that can be downloaded from the Internet to your computer or smartphone. Some podcasts also are shows that are broadcast on radio, television or other media.
**robot**: A machine that can sense its environment, process information and respond with specific actions. Some robots can act without any human input, while others are guided by a human.
**search engine**: (in computing) A computer program that allows a computer to search for information on the Internet. Common examples include Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo.
**system**: A network of parts that together work to achieve some function. For instance, the blood, vessels and heart are primary components of the human body's circulatory system. Similarly, trains, platforms, tracks, roadway signals and overpasses are among the potential components of a nation's railway system. System can even be applied to the processes or ideas that are part of some method or ordered set of procedures for getting a task done.
**technology**: The application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry — or the devices, processes and systems that result from those efforts.
**unit**: (in measurements) A unit of measurement is a standard way of expressing a physical quantity. Units of measure provide context for what numerical values represent and so convey the magnitude of physical properties. Examples include inches, kilograms, ohms, gauss, decibels, kelvins and nanoseconds.
**web**: (in computing) An abbreviation of World Wide Web, it is a slang term for the internet.