IRREVERENT DEMYSTIFIERS
Glossary: Controlling AI Systems
Understanding the words used to describe various aspects of making AI do what you need it to
There has been a lot of recent buzz about AI Control Systems, followed by the inevitable slew of semantic mudslinging (thanks, internet). To help demystify the space, I did my best to collect the various terms and come up with short explainers for each one, and making an attempt to break them down into their components:
Warm colors: Not software
Cold colors: Software
Yellow: Education
Orange: Research
Red: Policies/Rules
Steel blue: Product-side (built-in features within products)
Ice blue: User-side (tools to improve the user’s abilities)
Since I couldn’t possibly be an expert in all 57 of these, I’m bound to get some of it slightly off. Not too much, hopefully — I’ve done my best to fact check. I’m only human, though, so please don’t hurl tomatoes at me if I’ve gotten a nuance wrong. Just give me a gentle nudge in the comments. I’ve also got an alphabetized list for you if that’s of interest as text below.
