Recently the New York Times reported the following:
10 Pieces of Tech Jargon That Confused Us in 2025 (2/2)
Here’s a cheat sheet for decoding this year’s A.I.-driven
tech lingo, from RAG to superintelligence.
By Brian X. Chen - Brian X. Chen is The Times’s lead
consumer technology writer and the author of Tech Fix, a column about the
social implications of the tech we use.
Dec. 30, 2025, 5:02 a.m. ET
(continue)
RAG
This acronym stands for retrieval-augmented generation, a
technique to improve the accuracy of chatbots. It involves connecting a chatbot
with external sources of information, such as an encyclopedia, a history book
or a news article. It’s an off-putting acronym, but think of it as a rag that
can clean up occasionally messy answers spewed by chatbots.
This tongue twister
of a word describes technology that can answer your questions about images,
text and audio files that you share with a chatbot like ChatGPT or Gemini. You
will hear this word more often in the coming years when companies release smart
glasses that include cameras and microphones, enabling an A.I. assistant to
give you information about what you see and hear.
NPU
Most consumers probably wouldn’t care whether or not a
computer shipped with a neural processing unit, a chip that speeds up A.I. apps
that generate text and images. Nonetheless, Microsoft, Dell and Lenovo are
highlighting NPU chips to market their newest laptops. The chips are simply
faster and more energy-efficient, as new computer chips tend to be.
Related: TPU, or tensor processing unit, a term that Google uses to describe the neural processors it relies on in data centers to make A.I. software work.
Vibecoding
Chatbots like Claude and Gemini can automatically generate
lines of code, making it possible for inexperienced programmers to write simple
programs by typing a prompt like, “I want to create an app to choose an outfit
from my closet.” Enthusiasts have called the ritual “vibecoding,” and the
results have been hit or miss.
Agentic
When a chatbot does something for you, like book a flight,
techies call this “agentic,” referring to the way chatbots can act as agents,
similar to the people who book your travel. The clunky word has gained traction
in the last few years, but “virtual assistant,” the term used to describe older
tools that tried to help you (e.g., Siri and Alexa), was less cringe.
Magic
When Steve Jobs
introduced the first iPhone in 2007, he said the touch screen “works like
magic,” referring to how it worked very well. This year, Google awkwardly used
the word for a new A.I. tool it released for smartphones, Magic Cue. That piece
of software does things for you automatically — such as look up your flight
itinerary when a friend asks you what time you are landing.
But Magic Cue and similar A.I. technologies that do things for you automatically work when you share large amounts of personal data, like your contact list, location, messages and email. There’s nothing magical about that at all.
Translation
2025年讓我們困惑的10個科技術語（2/2）
這個縮寫代表檢索增強生成（retrieval-augmented
generation），是一種提高聊天機器人準確性的技術。它涉及將聊天機器人與外部資訊來源連接起來，例如百科全書、歷史書籍或新聞文章。這個縮寫聽起來有點拗口，但你可以把它想像成一塊抹布，用來清理聊天機器人偶爾吐出的混亂答案。
Multimodal (多模態)
這個拗口的詞描述的是一種聊天機器人（例如
ChatGPT 或 Gemini）能夠回答你關於你與它分享的圖像、文字和音訊檔案的問題的技術。未來幾年，隨著各大公司推出有內置相機和麥克風的智能眼鏡，你會更頻繁地聽到這個詞。這些智能眼鏡可以讓人工智能助理為你提供關於你所見所聞的資訊。
NPU (神經處理單元)
大多數消費者可能並不關心電腦是否配備了神經處理單元（Neural Processing Unit） (NPU) ，這種晶片可以加速生成文字和圖像的人工智能應用。然而，微軟、戴爾和聯想都在大力宣傳其最新筆記型電腦的 NPU 晶片。這些晶片只僅僅加快速度、提高能源效率，正如大多數新型電腦晶片一樣。
相關術語：TPU，即張量處理單元，是Google用來描述其數據中心中用於令人工智能軟件運行的神經處理器的用語。
直覺編碼 (Vibecoding)
像 Claude 和 Gemini 這樣的聊天機器人可以自動產生程式碼，讓經驗不足的程式設計師也能透過輸入諸如「我想創建一個應用，從我的衣櫥裡挑選一套衣服」之類的提示來編寫簡單的程式。愛好者們將這種做法稱為“直覺編碼”，但其效果卻參差。
Agentic (代理化)
當聊天機器人為你做某事，例如預訂機票時，技術人員稱之為“代理化”，指的是聊天機器人可以像代理人一樣行事，類似於為你預訂旅行的人。這個略為笨拙的詞在過去幾年逐漸流行起來，但用來描述那些試圖幫助你的舊工具（例如
Siri 和 Alexa）所用的詞語「虛擬助理」則顯得不那么生硬。
Magic (魔法)
2007 年，當喬布斯發佈第一代
iPhone 時，他說觸控螢幕感到 “有魔法一樣的效果” ，指的是它非常好用。今年，Google笨拙僵硬地用這個詞來形容一款新的人工智能產品。它發佈了一款適用於智慧型手機的新型人工智能工具並為 叫它為Magic
Cue。這款軟件可以自動為你完成一些任務 - 例如，當朋友問你的航班什麼時候着陸時，它會自動找到你的航班行程。
但是，Magic
Cue 和類似的 AI 技術之所以能夠自動為你完成這些任務，是因為你分享了大量的個人數據，例如你的聯絡人清單、位置資訊、簡訊和電子郵件。這根本談不上什麼神奇之處。
So, in recent years we can see more and more
superfluous adjectives, buzzwords, acronyms and abbreviations such as
superintelligence, RAG and TPU. Apparently, it is the artificial intelligence
boom that creates a fresh glossary of lingo. For average AI users, the
buzzwords make what is happening with our personal technology even more
confusing. This article is helpful in decoding some of the most used tech
jargon of 2025.
沒有留言:
張貼留言