TechCrunch has published a regularly updated glossary of AI terms written in plain English, aimed at readers who build with, invest in, or follow AI through news and podcasts. The piece is positioned as a living document that evolves alongside the field it describes.
The glossary covers terms readers are most likely to encounter, including AGI, AI agent, API endpoints, and chain of thought. It notes that AGI is a nebulous concept, citing OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's description of it as the equivalent of a median human co-worker, OpenAI's charter defining it as highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work, and Google DeepMind's framing of it as AI at least as capable as humans at most cognitive tasks. The article acknowledges that experts at the forefront of AI research remain divided on the term.
Additional entries explain that an AI agent is a tool using AI technologies to perform tasks on a user's behalf beyond what a basic chatbot can do, though the term means different things to different people. API endpoints are described as "buttons" on the back of software that other programs can press to make it do things, increasingly relevant as AI agents grow more capable of finding and using them autonomously.
The source text provided is truncated and cuts off mid-definition for chain of thought, so additional glossary entries beyond API endpoints are not included in this summary.