AI Optimization Terminology
How the vocabulary works
Not the definitions themselves, which live in the glossary and the comparison pages. This is the layer underneath: how a term gets in, what makes a definition citable, and why a young field produces five names for one discipline.
Why the vocabulary is like this
Why a young field produces five names for one discipline
Four forces, all operating here at once, and what usually resolves them.
Surface, mechanism, relationship: the three scope words
Most terminology arguments are scope arguments wearing a vocabulary costume.
Why naming a discipline after an architecture ages badly
The most predictable failure in technical vocabulary, happening again now.
The cost of an unstable vocabulary
Who pays, and why the largest share falls on the people least able to see it.
How definitions are made and maintained
What makes a definition citable
Correct is not enough. Five properties, and the test a definition has to pass.
How a term enters this reference
The threshold, the four checks, and why most proposals fail the second one.
When a definition changes, and what happens to the citations
Change is not the failure. Silent change is.
Terms we will not coin, and why
Including what the restraint costs us.
Reading the field
What standard means here, and what it does not
Three different jobs, only one of which involves anybody agreeing to anything.
How to read a vendor vocabulary
Five things their choice of words tells you before you read the proposal.