Reference · Plain English
AI Basics
Every term in this proposal, explained in plain English for people running an industrial business — no computer science required. Terms link back to where they matter in the plan.
- 01 Artificial Intelligence Software that performs tasks that normally require human judgment — reading, writing, recognizing, and predicting.
- 02 Large Language Model The engine behind modern AI assistants: a model trained on text that can read, write, and summarize language.
- 03 Generative AI AI that produces new content — drafts, summaries, images — rather than just classifying what already exists.
- 04 Prompt The instruction you give an AI system — and the discipline of writing instructions that get reliable results.
- 05 Hallucination When an AI states something false with complete confidence — the failure mode every serious deployment must design around.
- 06 Retrieval-Augmented Generation The technique of making an AI answer from your approved documents instead of its memory — with citations.
- 07 Local AI AI models that run on your own hardware, so sensitive data never leaves your infrastructure — essential for restricted industrial work.
- 08 Knowledge Assistant A chat assistant that answers staff questions from your approved documents, with citations — instead of a folder hunt.
- 09 Machine Learning Software that learns patterns from historical data instead of following hand-written rules — the foundation under modern AI.
- 10 Computer Vision AI that interprets images — in manufacturing, most often automated visual inspection for defects.
- 11 Predictive Maintenance Using sensor data and machine learning to predict equipment failures before they happen — powerful, and routinely oversold.
- 12 Data Classification Sorting information by sensitivity — Public, Internal, Confidential, Restricted — so every AI decision starts from the data, not the tool.
- 13 Human in the Loop The design rule that a person reviews and approves AI output before it counts — non-negotiable for reports, quotes, and quality documents.
- 14 Microsoft Copilot Microsoft's AI assistant built into Word, Excel, Outlook, and Teams — strongest where your work already lives in Microsoft 365.
Still have a question? Ask the assistant in the corner — it answers from this proposal with citations — or request a discovery meeting.