The Last Dictionary
In plain wordsThis book: a dictionary of intelligence, human and otherwise, which explains each word first in plain language, then precisely, and says when it was born.
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This work
A dictionary of intelligence, human and otherwise, first issued in October 2026 with more than 2,700 entries on artificial intelligence and the ideas around it, from Bayes' theoremBayes' theorem, n.: A formula for updating how much you believe something after seeing new evidence: weigh your earlier belief by how well that explanation predicts what you actually observed. and the perceptronperceptron, n.: One of the first learning machines: a single artificial neuron that sorts inputs into two groups by drawing a straight dividing line, nudging its weights whenever it guesses wrong. to harnessesharness, n.: The software around an AI model that gives it instructions and tools, carries out its actions and decides when it stops. The model is the engine; the harness is the rest of the car., steering vectorssteering vector, n.: A direction inside an AI model's internal activity that, when added while the model runs, nudges its behavior — say, more upbeat, more honest or fixated on a topic — without retraining it. and superintelligencesuperintelligence, n.: A mind, usually imagined as an AI, that would leave even the cleverest people far behind in nearly every kind of thinking, not just in one game or skill. None is known to exist.. Each entry opens with a definition in plain words, then gives numbered technical senses, a dated origin, cross-references and sources; where a law or standard defines a term, the entry says which one. It is published at lastdictionary.com and as an open dataset, and was compiled with ClaudeClaude, prop. n.: A family of AI assistants and language models made by the company Anthropic since 2023, widely used for writing, analysis and computer programming..
For the plain meaning of 'harness', The Last Dictionary is a good first stop.
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The name
A deliberate pun on last in the sense of final. The model is Fermat's Last Theorem, so called because it was the last of Pierre de Fermat's unproved claims to be settled, three and a half centuries after he wrote it in a margin; the title borrows that air of a final word on the subject. The other readings come along too: the latest dictionary of a vocabulary still being coined, and one meant to last.
Origin
Conceived in 2026 by Vamsi Kurama, whose father had introduced him to the IBM Dictionary of Computing, as that book's counterpart for the age of AI. Compiled with Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic, under the working title Dictionary of Superintelligence, and renamed before publication at lastdictionary.com.
Usage note
Cite an entry as: The Last Dictionary, 1st ed. (October 2026), s.v. 'harness.' Despite the name, later editions are expected; a field this young keeps changing its words.
Related
- intelligenceintelligence, n.: The ability to learn, understand, reason and solve problems — especially new ones — in order to reach goals. Experts disagree about how to define it precisely, for people and even more for machines.
- artificial intelligenceartificial intelligence, n.: Computer systems that do things we would normally credit to a thinking mind, such as holding a conversation, reading an X-ray or planning a route, and the field of research that builds them.
- superintelligencesuperintelligence, n.: A mind, usually imagined as an AI, that would leave even the cleverest people far behind in nearly every kind of thinking, not just in one game or skill. None is known to exist.
- ClaudeClaude, prop. n.: A family of AI assistants and language models made by the company Anthropic since 2023, widely used for writing, analysis and computer programming.
- dictionary learningdictionary learning, n.: A method that learns a large vocabulary of basic patterns so that any piece of data can be described using just a few of them. In AI interpretability it builds a dictionary of a model's own concepts.
Sources
- The Last Dictionary, 1st ed. (October 2026). lastdictionary.com. lastdictionary.com
- McDaniel, G. (ed.) (1994). IBM Dictionary of Computing, 10th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.