Prompt Engineering

Few-Shot Prompting

A technique where a language model is given a small number of examples within the prompt to guide its response pattern.

Zero-Shot Prompting

Querying a language model to perform a task it was not explicitly trained on, without providing any examples in the prompt.

Chain-of-Thought Prompting

A prompting technique that encourages language models to break down reasoning into intermediate steps before providing an answer.

In-Context Learning

The ability of large language models to learn new tasks from examples provided within the input prompt without parameter updates.

Few-Shot Learning

A machine learning approach where models learn to perform tasks from only a small number of labelled examples, often achieved through in-context learning in large language models.

Zero-Shot Learning

The ability of AI models to perform tasks they were not explicitly trained on, using generalised knowledge and instruction-following capabilities.

Emergent Capabilities

Abilities that appear in large language models at certain scale thresholds that were not present in smaller versions, such as in-context learning and complex reasoning.

Tool Use in AI

The capability of AI agents to invoke external tools, APIs, databases, and software applications to accomplish tasks beyond the model's intrinsic knowledge and abilities.

System Prompt

An initial instruction set provided to a language model that defines its persona, constraints, output format, and behavioural guidelines for a given session or application.

The creation of artificially produced datasets that mimic the statistical properties of real-world data, used for training AI models while preserving privacy.

A theoretical level of AI that surpasses human cognitive abilities across all domains, including creativity and social intelligence.

The practice of making AI systems' operations, data usage, and decision processes openly visible to stakeholders.

An AI algorithm that generates a sequence of actions to achieve a specified goal from an initial state.

AI designed to handle specific tasks without possessing self-awareness, consciousness, or true understanding of the task domain.

A thought experiment by John Searle arguing that executing a program cannot give a computer genuine understanding or consciousness.

The process of determining cause-and-effect relationships from data, going beyond correlation to establish causation.

The frameworks, policies, and regulations that guide the responsible development and deployment of AI technologies.