Glossary | WATTBA

A

agent see AI agent
AGI

AGI (artificial general intelligence) is AI that can perform many different thinking tasks at a human level, rather than one fixed task. There is no agreed point at which something counts as AGI.

6 articles
AI agent

An AI agent is an AI program that carries out tasks on its own: it looks things up, writes code, operates a computer or works through a long series of steps, without a human directing each one.

64 articles
AI safety

AI safety is about making sure AI systems do what is intended, cause no harm and are not used for malicious ends. It covers the technology, the rules and the oversight behind it.

21 articles
Alzheimer's disease

Alzheimer's is a brain disease in which brain cells gradually die. As a result, memory and thinking decline. Researchers are looking for the causes and for ways to slow the disease.

9 articles
Amino acid

Amino acids are the small building blocks of which proteins are made. The body uses twenty kinds of them. The order in which they are joined determines which protein results.

4 articles
Antibiotic resistance

Antibiotic resistance means bacteria have adapted so that an antibiotic can no longer stop them. Infections become harder to treat, so researchers are looking for new drugs.

2 articles
Antimatter

Antimatter is the mirror image of ordinary matter. When the two meet, they both vanish in a flash of energy.

1 article

B

Benchmark

A benchmark is a fixed test for comparing AI models. Every model takes the same tasks, and the score shows what it can and cannot yet do.

29 articles
Blockchain

A blockchain is a public ledger in which transactions are recorded in blocks, chained together and maintained by many computers at once. Changing it afterwards is almost impossible. Cryptocurrencies run on it.

2 articles
Brain implant

A brain implant is a small device placed in or on the brain. It can measure brain signals, or stimulate the brain. That way it can, for example, help people communicate or reduce symptoms.

8 articles

C

Cancer

Cancer is a collective name for diseases in which cells grow uncontrollably and can crowd out healthy tissue or spread elsewhere in the body. There are hundreds of types, each with its own approach.

13 articles
Chip

A chip is a small piece of silicon with billions of tiny switches, the transistors, on which a computer calculates and remembers. AI chips are built to do the huge amount of computation behind AI models quickly.

69 articles
Connectome

A connectome is the complete wiring diagram of a brain: a map of all the brain cells and all the connections between them. Researchers use it to understand how a brain is built.

2 articles
Contrastive learning

Contrastive learning is a training method in which an AI model is shown pairs that either belong together or do not, such as a picture with the right or a wrong description. This is how it learns what goes with what.

1 article
CRISPR

CRISPR is a technique that lets researchers cut at a chosen spot in DNA or edit genetic material very precisely. It was borrowed from a defence mechanism of bacteria.

4 articles

D

Data centre

A data centre is a large building full of servers: powerful computers that compute and store data day and night. AI models are trained there and run there when you ask a chatbot something.

35 articles
De novo protein design

In de novo protein design, researchers invent a protein that does not occur in nature, entirely new and for a chosen task. AI models increasingly do a large part of that design work.
Digital twin

A digital twin is a virtual copy of a real thing, such as a machine, factory or reactor, which lets you practise and make predictions without using the real thing.

7 articles

F

Formal verification

In formal verification, a computer uses mathematical logic to prove that software or rules meet a specification, for all possible situations. Ordinary testing only tries out some of those situations.

3 articles
Fourier limit

The Fourier limit is the physical limit on how pure the colour of emitted light can be. The longer a molecule or atom holds on to its energy, the sharper that colour.

G

Gene therapy

Gene therapy adjusts or supplements the genetic material of cells to tackle a disease at its cause. It is a large field of research, with a few treatments already approved.

6 articles
Gluons

Gluons are the particles that glue quarks together. They carry the strong nuclear force and so hold protons and neutrons together, among other things.

1 article

H

Humanoid robot

A humanoid robot is a robot with a human-like body: a torso, two arms and usually two legs. That lets it fit into a world built for people, from stairs to tools.

19 articles
Hydrogen

Hydrogen is the lightest element and a clean fuel: when it is burned or used in a fuel cell, only water is left. It is often made by splitting water.

8 articles

I

Immunotherapy

Immunotherapy is a treatment that uses or adjusts the body's own immune system to fight a disease, especially cancer. Examples are drugs that switch immune cells back on, modified immune cells and tailor-made vaccines.

5 articles

L

Language model

A language model is an AI model trained on vast amounts of text, so it can understand, write and translate text. The chatbots you know run on a language model.

55 articles
Lean

Lean is a programming language and helper program for mathematical proofs. Every definition and every step is written down so precisely that the computer can check whether the proof is correct.

10 articles
Local AI

Local AI is an AI model that runs on your own computer or phone instead of on a company's servers. Your data stays with you, and it often works without internet too.

11 articles
Logical qubit

A logical qubit is one reliable qubit built from many individual qubits. Together they catch each other's errors, so that a quantum computer can compute for longer.

12 articles

M

Machine learning

Machine learning is a way of getting computers to learn from examples instead of fixed rules. A model finds patterns in lots of data on its own and uses them for new cases.

52 articles
Mass extinction

A mass extinction is a period in which a large share of all species on Earth disappears in a short time. Palaeontologists distinguish five major extinction events, the Big Five, the most recent 66 million years ago.

1 article
Mixture of experts

A mixture of experts is an AI model built like a team of specialists. For each piece of text it picks only the experts that are needed, which saves computation.

5 articles
Modulator

A modulator converts data into light by making a beam of light brighter and dimmer at great speed. It is the light switch with which a chip sends data over optical fibre.

1 article

N

Neutrino

A neutrino is a tiny particle that weighs almost nothing and barely reacts with other matter. Billions of them fly straight through you every second.

1 article
Nuclear fusion

Nuclear fusion is the merging of light atomic nuclei, as in the sun. It releases a great deal of energy. Researchers are working on fusion power plants that use it to make electricity.

10 articles
Nuclear power

Nuclear power is electricity from the heat released when uranium atoms split. It supplies power day and night without CO2 emissions, including for AI data centres.

6 articles

O

Open source and open weights

Open source means the blueprint of software is public and you may use it freely. With an open AI model, the weights, the numbers in which it stores its knowledge, can be downloaded.

45 articles
Optical fibre

An optical fibre is a hair-thin strand of glass that light travels through. It carries data at great speed over long distances, even under the ocean.

4 articles
Organoid

An organoid is a tiny piece of tissue grown in the lab that resembles a real organ. It grows from stem cells and lets researchers study how organs work, without needing a human or an animal.

4 articles

P

Perturb-seq

Perturb-seq is a research method that lets researchers measure, across many cells at once, what happens when a single gene is switched off. The result is a map of which gene controls which other genes.

1 article
Photonic crystal

A photonic crystal is a material with a regular pattern of tiny holes or layers that determine how light passes through it. This lets you slow down, trap or steer light.
Protease

A protease is an enzyme that cuts other proteins apart. The body uses proteases for digestion, among other things, and to switch signals on or off. You can think of them as molecular scissors.

1 article
Protein

Proteins are the workhorses of the body: molecules that build, transport, pass on signals and speed up reactions. They consist of chains of amino acids that fold into a fixed shape.

28 articles
Protein folding

Protein folding is the process by which a chain of amino acids folds into a three-dimensional shape. That shape determines what the protein can do. AI can now often predict that shape well.

1 article

Q

Quantisation

Quantisation means rounding the numbers in which an AI model stores its knowledge, so that the model takes up far less space and fits on smaller computers. It costs some accuracy.

2 articles
Quantum computer

A quantum computer calculates with qubits, which can be in several states at once. That lets it solve some problems much faster than an ordinary computer.

18 articles
Quantum error correction

Quantum error correction is the technique by which a quantum computer detects and repairs its own errors while it computes. Many qubits work together as one reliable qubit.

11 articles
Quarks

Quarks are the smallest building blocks of protons and neutrons. They never occur on their own and are held together by gluons.

1 article
Qubit

A qubit is the unit of computation of a quantum computer. Unlike an ordinary bit it can be in several states at once, but it is also very sensitive to disturbance.

14 articles

S

Self-improving AI

Self-improving AI is AI that helps make itself or the software around it better, for example by designing experiments and improving code. The idea is that progress could speed up as a result.

7 articles
Singularity
Slow light

Slow light is light that advances much more slowly than normal in a special material or pattern. This allows components on a chip to become shorter and more economical.
Solar cell

A solar cell turns sunlight directly into electricity. Researchers are working on cells that convert more light, last longer and, for example, are flexible.

14 articles
Stem cell

A stem cell is a cell that can keep dividing and can grow into other types of cells, such as skin, blood or nerve cells. That is why stem cells matter for research into tissue repair.

10 articles
Supercomputer

A supercomputer is an enormously powerful system of thousands or tens of thousands of linked processors, built for heavy computation such as weather forecasts and simulations. Increasingly, AI runs on them too.

5 articles

T

Tokens

Tokens are the pieces of text a language model reads and writes: often a short word or part of a word. The speed, cost and memory of AI are measured in tokens.

23 articles
Transmission electron microscope

A transmission electron microscope fires electrons through an ultra-thin sample and so produces images in which you can even see rows of atoms. It is widely used for chips and materials.

1 article
Triboelectric nanogenerator

A triboelectric nanogenerator turns small movements into electricity, just like a balloon you rub against your hair. It can thus act as a sensor that generates its own signal.

1 article