Intelligent Systems Glossary

Built for non-technical founders and cross-functional teams shipping AI products. Click any term to get a clear, practical definition.

AI & Machine Learning

WCAG AA: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Level AA is the practical baseline standard for web accessibility. It ensures your product works for users with disabilities: colorblind users, keyboard-only users, screen reader users, and users with low vision.
ML Explainability: Showing users why an algorithm made a decision, not just what it decided. Example: instead of "Risk: High," explain "Risk: High — due to 6 failed trades in the last 18 months and 2x normal deal size."
Feature Importance: Which inputs to the model drove the prediction most? Tools like SHAP and LIME show which factors influenced the decision. Non-technical users care: "This recommendation is based on X, Y, Z."
Distribution Shift: When a model is trained on one type of data but deployed on a different type, it fails silently. Example: model trained on 90-second trades suddenly sees trades that take 30 minutes. It doesn't know this is different.
Human-in-the-Loop: AI suggests, humans decide. Rather than fully automating a decision, the system shows the recommendation and lets users confirm, edit, or override. Builds trust and preserves human judgment.
Confidence Layer: The interface that communicates uncertainty. "92% confident" paired with "what data drove this" and "how would the decision change if X changed." The difference between a user trusting and rejecting the same recommendation.

Cognitive Friction: Unnecessary mental effort. "What does this button do?" or "Why is this here?" are friction points. Remove one confusing step and adoption rises 10-30%.
Time-to-Value (TTV): How long before a new user feels "Oh, I see why this is useful." Shorter TTV = faster adoption. If TTV is 1 hour but users abandon at 15 minutes, you have a design problem.
Product-Led Growth (PLG): No expensive sales team needed—the product itself drives adoption. Figma and Slack did this: so useful, users tell other users, virality follows.
User Experience (UX): How a user feels when they use your product. Not just beauty—clarity, speed, joy, trust. Good UX removes friction; bad UX creates confusion and abandonment.

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): Total marketing spend ÷ new customers acquired. If CAC is $1,000 but the customer only generates $500 in lifetime value, your unit economics are broken.
Lifetime Value (LTV): If a customer pays $100/month for 3 years, LTV ≈ $3,600. Healthy businesses have LTV > 3× CAC. Below that, you're losing money on every customer.
Painkiller vs. Vitamin: Painkiller = must-have (users are desperate). Vitamin = nice-to-have (adoption is slower). Competing on painkillers is easier than vitamins. Build painkillers first.
Product-Market Fit (PMF): When your product solves a real problem for a specific market and users want it badly enough to tell others. Without PMF, growth is unsustainable. With it, growth becomes effortless.
Programmatic Advertising: Instead of humans buying individual ad placements, algorithms bid on impressions in real-time. Faster, cheaper, more precise than manual buying. Also: easier to mess up.

This glossary is updated monthly.