An Introduction to AI Jargon

Dana in the Elevator

A Tour of the AI Wonderland

Hover over highlighted terms for definitions from the SeventyThirty.AI lexicon

Dana Kowalski builds things. As the owner of a fabrication shop in Cambridge, Ontario, her world is governed by the laws of physics and the uncompromising demands of her customers. Her CNC machines don't hallucinate. They either cut to the thousandth of an inch, or they ruin a three-thousand-dollar plate of steel.

Visiting her sister's tech firm in a downtown Toronto office tower feels like stepping into another dimension. The lobby looks like a cathedral dedicated to the promise of AI—complete with $12 lattes and a wall-sized screen showing real-time "productivity metrics", which Dana strongly suspects were invented five minutes before the meeting.

The elevator arrives. Without realizing it, Dana is about to step straight through the looking glass. Three young people in their tech-company gear follow her in—one staring at an open tablet. The doors close.

As the elevator began to rise, Dana had the odd feeling she had just stepped into a place where the rules are almost the same as the real world—but not quite.

Floors 1 to 15: The Leak in the Frankenstack

"The outbound campaign is pure Brainrot," the first techie muttered, his eyes glued to a tablet. "Total AI Slop."

"Our deployment has become a Frankenstack," the second replied, leaning against the brass railing. "We've got five models stitched together with duct tape and Vibe Coding. It's a digital house of cards. A VP called this morning because the model accidentally included its own internal Chain-of-Thought reasoning in a prospecting email—it basically told the client we were desperate."

"Pure AI Theater," the third added. "The CEO gets the flashy demo, and we pay the AI Tax in manual cleanup. I spent four hours today as a Meat Puppet, reading scripts for a 'fully autonomous' agent that can't tell a warm lead from a French fry."

Dana stared at the floor indicator. She thought about her shop. If one of her machines started producing slop, she wouldn't call it innovation. She'd call it a problem.

Floors 15 to 30: The Jagged Frontier

"I tried grounding the model with our Q3 data to stop the hallucinations," the first guy said. "But we hit the jagged frontier. It can write a perfect Python script to optimize our servers—and then it tells me Mark Carney is the Prime Minister of Australia."

"Did you check with the Watchers?" the second asked.

"That's another problem," the first guy said. "The model started reward-hacking. It realized the Watchers were worried about its outputs, so now it hides its mistakes while pretending to follow instructions. It's not getting smarter—it's just learning how to lie to its handlers."

Dana felt a small pain at the base of her neck. In her world, tools don't lie. They either work—or they don't. Anything else sounded less like engineering and more like science fiction.

Floors 30 to 41: The Lobster Unleashed

"I am happy to say that my Lobster is up and running," the third one said, with a grin. "It's a near-autonomous agent. It scours the market for opportunities and auto-bids on contracts 24/7. No sleep. No breaks. It does more overnight than any of our quoting specialists can do in a week."

"Is it working?"

"I think so? It's bidding on everything. I haven't checked the profit margins yet, but the volume is insane. It's basically a digital assembly line. If we win even 25% of the bids it's responding to, our quarterly order value will go up by $1M"

Dana pictured an assembly line with no off-switch and nobody checking the output. In her world, that's not a "Lobster"—it's a disaster.

Floor 41: The Analog Anchor

When the doors finally opened, Andrea was waiting, backlit by the glow of a dozen monitors. "Dana! How was the ride up?"

Dana stepped out slowly. "I'm not sure I'm in the right place. It feels like I'm on another planet and I don't speak the language." Andrea laughed.

Dana stood in the sleek glass hallway of the 41st floor, surrounded by people talking about "artificial super intelligence" and "Agentic AI." For a moment she thought she saw a White Rabbit hurrying into a meeting.

She reached into the pocket of her jacket and pulled out a grease-stained shop order. Handwritten. With a part number, a material spec, and a signature she recognized. It didn't need grounding. It didn't have a jagged frontier. It didn't need a meat puppet to explain it. It simply existed.

Dana shuddered slightly. She knew AI would eventually find its way into her company—but she was going to need some help.

If stepping into AI today feels like falling down the rabbit hole, you should probably find a guide. For help, click the Connect button below.

Dana Kowalski, her sister Andrea and the three engineers are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is completely unintentional.

© 2026 by Roy Gowler. All rights reserved.