S (72 terms)
Saddle Plateau
Flat high-dimensional regions slowing training.
Intermediate
Saddle Point
A point where gradient is zero but is neither a max nor min; common in deep nets.
Intermediate
Safety Envelope
Hard constraints preventing unsafe actions.
Frontier
Safety Filter
Automated detection/prevention of disallowed outputs (toxicity, self-harm, illegal instruction, etc.).
Intermediate
Safety-Critical System
Systems where failure causes physical harm.
Advanced
SaMD
Software regulated as a medical device.
Intermediate
Sampling
Stochastic generation strategies that trade determinism for diversity; key knobs include temperature and nucleus samp...
Intermediate
Scalable Oversight
Using limited human feedback to guide large models.
Advanced
Scaling Laws
Empirical laws linking model size, data, compute to performance.
Intermediate
Scientific ML
AI applied to scientific problems.
Advanced
Score-Based Model
Learns the score (∇ log p(x)) for generative sampling.
Advanced
Scratchpad
Temporary reasoning space (often hidden).
Intro
Seasonality
Repeating temporal patterns.
Intermediate
Second-Order Methods
Optimization using curvature information; often expensive at scale.
Intermediate
Secure Inference
Methods to protect model/data during inference (e.g., trusted execution environments) from operators/attackers.
Intermediate
Segmentation
Assigning labels per pixel (semantic) or per instance (instance segmentation) to map object boundaries.
Intermediate
Self-Attention
Attention where queries/keys/values come from the same sequence, enabling token-to-token interactions.
Intermediate
Self-Consistency
Sampling multiple outputs and selecting consensus.
Intro
Self-Model
Internal representation of the agent itself.
Frontier
Self-Reflection
Models evaluating and improving their own outputs.
Intermediate
Self-Supervised Learning
Learning from data by constructing “pseudo-labels” (e.g., next-token prediction, masked modeling) without manual anno...
Intermediate
Semantic Search
Retrieval based on embedding similarity rather than keyword overlap, capturing paraphrases and related concepts.
Intermediate
Semantic Segmentation
Pixel-wise classification of image regions.
Intermediate
Semi-Supervised Learning
Training with a small labeled dataset plus a larger unlabeled dataset, leveraging assumptions like smoothness/cluster...
Intermediate
Sensitivity
Ability to correctly detect disease.
Intermediate
Sensor
Devices measuring physical quantities (vision, lidar, force, IMU, etc.).
Advanced
Sensorimotor Loop
Closed loop linking sensing and acting.
Advanced
Sentencing Algorithm
Models estimating recidivism risk.
Intermediate
SFT
Fine-tuning on (prompt, response) pairs to align a model with instruction-following behaviors.
Intermediate
Shadow AI
AI used without governance approval.
Intermediate
Shadow Deployment
Running new model alongside production without user impact.
Intermediate
SHAP
Feature attribution method grounded in cooperative game theory for explaining predictions in tabular settings.
Intermediate
Shared Autonomy
Control shared between human and agent.
Frontier
Sharp Minimum
A narrow minimum often associated with poorer generalization.
Intermediate
Shutdown Problem
Ensuring AI allows shutdown.
Advanced
Sim-to-Real Gap
Performance drop when moving from simulation to reality.
Advanced
Simpson’s Paradox
Trend reversal when data is aggregated improperly.
Advanced
Simulation
Artificial environment for training/testing agents.
Advanced
Singular Value Decomposition
Decomposes a matrix into orthogonal components; used in embeddings and compression.
Advanced
SLAM
Simultaneous Localization and Mapping for robotics.
Intermediate
Slow Takeoff
Incremental capability growth.
Advanced
Soft Robotics
Robots made of flexible materials.
Advanced
Softmax
Converts logits to probabilities by exponentiation and normalization; common in classification and LMs.
Intermediate
Sparse Attention
Attention mechanisms that reduce quadratic complexity.
Intermediate
Sparse Reward
Reward only given upon task completion.
Advanced
Speaker Diarization
Identifying speakers in audio.
Intermediate
Specification Gaming
Model exploits poorly specified objectives.
Advanced
Specificity
Of true negatives, the fraction correctly identified.
Intermediate
Speech Recognition
Converting audio speech into text, often using encoder-decoder or transducer architectures.
Intermediate
Speech Synthesis
Generating human-like speech from text.
Intermediate
Spurious Correlation
Model relies on irrelevant signals.
Intermediate
Stability
System returns to equilibrium after disturbance.
Intermediate
State Estimation
Inferring the agent’s internal state from noisy sensor data.
Advanced
State Space
All possible configurations an agent may encounter.
Intermediate
State Space Model
Models time evolution via hidden states.
Intermediate
Stochastic Approximation
Optimization under uncertainty.
Intermediate
Stochastic Gradient Descent
A gradient method using random minibatches for efficient training on large datasets.
Intermediate
Strategic Interaction
Decisions dependent on others’ actions.
Advanced
Stress Testing
Simulating adverse scenarios.
Intermediate
Structural Causal Model
Formal model linking causal mechanisms and variables.
Advanced
Structured Output
Forcing predictable formats for downstream systems; reduces parsing errors and supports validation/guardrails.
Intermediate
Supervised Learning
Learning a function from input-output pairs (labeled data), optimizing performance on predicting outputs for unseen i...
Intermediate
Supply Chain Attack
Compromising AI systems via libraries, models, or datasets.
Intermediate
Surrogate Model
Fast approximation of costly simulations.
Advanced
Swarm Dynamics
Collective behavior without central control.
Advanced
Swarm Intelligence
Distributed agents producing emergent intelligence.
Advanced
Symbolic Regression
Finding mathematical equations from data.
Advanced
Synthetic Data
Artificially created data used to train/test models; helpful for privacy and coverage, risky if unrealistic.
Intermediate
Synthetic Sensors
Artificial sensor data generated in simulation.
Advanced
System Dynamics
Equations governing how system states change over time.
Advanced
System Identification
Learning physical parameters from data.
Advanced
System Prompt
A high-priority instruction layer setting overarching behavior constraints for a chat model.
Intermediate