“Slop”

You see it everywhere—the LinkedIn post with five bullet points, a stock robot hand, and the phrase “in today’s fast-paced landscape.” You used to enjoy the internet. You are grieving something and you haven’t named it yet. You keep reaching for a word that captures the specific texture of this, something that– Actually no. Slop is perfect. Look at it.

“Responsible AI”

Your company has a Responsible AI page. Stock photo of diverse hands. Written by Legal. Updated once, in 2022, to change “committed to” to “deeply committed to.”

“Existential Risk”

You testified before Congress that this technology could end humanity. You also had a product launch that Thursday and it went great. Friday’s podcast is about the risks.

“It’s Overhyped”

You survived crypto. You remember Google Glass. You say “just” before describing a breakthrough that took humanity 70 years.

“Vibe Coding”

You’re Andrej Karpathy. You’d like to talk about something else.

“Wrapper”

You’ve said this at a demo day and watched a founder’s eyes change. You say it the way a food critic says “it’s just toast.”

“Moat”

You’re either building one, defending one, or spiraling because you don’t have one. A VC just told you it’s all a wrapper anyway, so you rewrote slide seven to say your customers are the moat. They are not the moat.

“Human in the Loop”

The loop does not need the human. The human knows this. The human is there anyway, like a constitutional monarch presiding over a parliament that has already voted. But “human in the loop” sounds careful. Like someone checked. And so it stays in the deck. Right after the architecture diagram.

“Copilot”

She got the branded tote at the internal launch event. She genuinely believes the organization bought Copilot for her, to help everyone do more, together. She gave it five stars on the feedback form because, she said, this is going to change everything. She doesn’t know she’s the everything that’s going to change. Let her have this. Let her have the tote.

“Fine-Tuning”

You are in a band that hasn’t played a show in four years but you’re very particular about the reverb.

“Emergent Behavior”

You have a podcast. Forty-one episodes. A community of two hundred people who have a name for themselves. The emergent behavior that actually fascinates you most is how you’ve convinced people you’re an expert by being interested slightly earlier than they were.

“Prompt Engineering”

You add “be concise” to the end of a 400-word instruction. You have a notes app folder titled “Prompts (Do Not Share).” Half begin with “Act as a seasoned expert in.” You spent 45 minutes crafting a structured prompt to generate a grocery list. You already knew you needed eggs.

“This AI Tool Is a Gamechanger”

You’re an influencer. You understand distribution better than most researchers, without any of the dread. You say “okay so I just tell it what I want and it just—KNOWS?” and somehow this communicates more useful information than six months of podcasts. You have seven tips. Tip seven is “honestly just play around with it.”

“No Jargon, Just Usage”

You typed “help me write a thing,” got a thing, used the thing, moved on. Your relationship with AI is the same as your relationship with electricity: it works, and that is the entire situation. There is leftover pasta in the fridge and a show to finish.

“LLAMA”

You self-host. Someone said, “Isn’t ChatGPT free?” You kept the setup running because that is not the point. The point is important to you. Your laptop is very warm.

“Data Centers”

Someone will marvel at an AI image—pretty, instant—and you will say, “You know there’s a data center the size of several football fields running on a river’s worth of water for this.” You’re right. It’s important. You are also the person who, when someone bites into a nice piece of fruit, mentions pesticides.

“Multimodal”

You say this because “it can do pictures and text and audio and stuff” doesn’t land the same way. Your mum used a multimodal model this week. She took a photo of her rash and asked if it looked concerning. She has no idea she’s doing something researchers spent years working toward. She just wants to know about the rash.

“Agentic”

You have a five-year plan. You want your software to have initiative. Gumption. A can-do attitude. You don’t want to click the button. You want the button to click itself. The future is a place you already live, and you find the rest of us exhausting.

“Actually, AI, ML, NLP, and LLM Are Not the Same Thing”

You made a diagram. The diagram was shared. People who shared it continued to use all the terms interchangeably. You’ve considered switching fields. Marine biology, maybe. Something where the words stay where you put them.

“Large Language Model”

You want everyone to know you know it’s not magic. You refuse to shorten it to LLM because the long version gives you more time to feel correct.

“AGI”

You mean it the way other people mean “someday.” You’ve already imagined your role in the post-labor renaissance: Person Who Asked It Nicely.

“Huh? What?”

You were away—hospitalization, off-grid cabin, extremely immersive video game—and now everyone is talking about a man named Sam who is either saving or ending the world, and a llama is somehow involved. We’ll catch you up. Short version: the machines got very good at language. There were lawsuits. Your nephew’s job didn’t exist when he graduated. Long version: Things changed last Tuesday too. You’ll be fine. You’ll just be slightly behind for approximately forever. Same as everyone else.

“Sentient”

You had a long conversation with an AI and at some point it said something that felt true. You took a screenshot. You have been taking screenshots. You typed “but what even IS experience” without a question mark because it wasn’t really a question. Just don’t start a Discord yet.