STRANGE RULES — GLOSSARY

ATTENTION ECONOMY

Idea that human attention is a limited resource that has become highly valuable in the digital world.

ATTENTION GUILD

Network of people and agents who coordinate attention, context, and computational resources toward a shared mission.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)

Various forms of technology which enable machines and computers to simulate human cognitive functions.

ARTIFICIAL GENERAL INTELLIGENCE

A hypothetical goal of the future of AI development in which the AI's abilities can match, even exceed those of humans in any given task.

GENERATIVE AI

Can create new output based on the vast amount of data it has processed.

MACHINE LEARNING

Systems of AI which are fed historical data (books, information online). A subset of which is Deep Learning (DL).

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AGENT

An active system that can make decisions, organize tasks, and take actions to achieve specific goals.

AI SLOP

Low-quality, mass-produced content generated by AI.

ALGORITHM

Instructions how to perform or make decisions to achieve a certain goal.

BASE MODEL

The original, general-purpose version of an AI.

BLOCKCHAIN

A shared digital record of information which stores data as a chain of blocks transparently and securely.

CHATBOT

An automated responder which replies to a person's questions based on what it knows.

CODING

Writing / generating the inner workings of any given electronic device. There are different kinds of coding.

AGENTIC CODING

Programming software to act increasingly independent and adjust its own code to achieve a goal.

Programming software to act with increasing independence, adjusting its own code to achieve a goal.

VIBE CODING

More intuitive and quicker to the goal.

COMPOSITIONAL PATTERN PRODUCING NETWORK (CPPN)

System that creates images and shapes based on mathematical formulas rather than copying photos.

CONTEXT CODING

Makes use of its context, the surrounding information, to guide the writing and execution of the code.

EMBEDDING

Translating data into lists of numbers for a computer to understand them.

HALLUCINATION

AI model confidently producing information that sounds plausible but is incorrect or made up.

HOST

System or environment (like a server or app) that runs model and handles its inputs and outputs.

LARGE LANGUAGE MODEL (LLM)

AI system trained on huge amounts of text to understand and generate human-like language.

MODEL TRAINING

Teaching an AI by feeding it lots of data and adjusting it to improve its outputs.

NEURAL NETWORK

AI made of connected layers of simple units that work together to recognize patterns and make predictions from data.

NON-FUNGIBLE TOKEN (NFT)

An NFT is a digital certificate of ownership, not the image or the file itself.

PROMPT

Input you give (like a question or instruction) that tells the model what you want it to respond with.

PROTOCOL

A set of underlying rules that shapes how systems behave, interact, and create meaning over time.

PROTOCOL ART

Medium that operates upstream of media: it works at the level of the systems beneath media which make them, focusing on the rules, incentives, and standards that shape how culture is created and shared.

REPOSITORY

A digital warehouse for code.

SMART CONTRACT

Contract that executes itself without the need or possibility of human interference.

TRAINING SET

Collection of example data used to teach an AI how to recognize patterns and make predictions.

UPSTREAM

The hidden layer beneath the content that is visible to us. Where the rules, systems, and protocols that shape media are created.