You Don’t Need 99 AI Terms
You need to know what matters and ignore the rest
Somewhere, a well-meaning person decided the average professional needs to understand 99 AI terms in order to remain employable.
Ninety-nine.
As if Carol in accounting woke up this morning thinking, “If I could just get a handle on diffusion models and tokenization, not only will my job be safe, I’ll finally be able to buy my dream home.”
Right.
We have officially entered the phase of technological change where the glossary is longer than the actual usefulness.
There’s a familiar assumption baked into graphics showing this, that more vocabulary equals more competence.
It doesn’t.
It usually equals more anxiety. And confusion. And a sudden desire to learn log hewing.
These days, instead of asking:
“What do I actually need to do my job better?”
People are asking:
“What am I supposed to memorize so I don’t fall behind?”
Those are two very different questions.
Most people do not need to understand 99 AI terms.
They need to understand three things:
What matters.
What helps.
What to ignore.
The rest is a very sophisticated way of making intelligent people feel late to something that changes its mind about what it is every five minutes.
You don’t need a glossary to move forward.
You need orientation.
And maybe permission to stop pretending you’re supposed to care about all of it.