What's your AI vocabulary?

Ten days ago, Satya Nadella published a blog post in which he argued that you pay for AI twice. Once with money, and once with proprietary knowledge you have to feed it. His recommendation to every company: create your private evals. But wait, do you know what an eval is? Could you define it in simple terms? Most people can't. And that’s the thing with the AI vocabulary that has seeped into our lives. On today’s episode of Zero Shot, hosts Rohin Dharmakumar, Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Brady Ng put some common AI concepts and words to test in their own lives. They pick from the following options: A. Never heard of it B. Heard of it, can't define it C. Can define it D. It changed how I work Here are the words they unpack: Frontier models · Open weights · Tokens · Context window · Fine-tuning · Distillation · RAG · Prompt/context engineering · Context store · Prompt library · Context rot · Voice & style · Harness · Loops · Evals Along the way, they discuss Fable, distillation, the hype around prompt engineering, the current push around taste, and the one AI leader missing from all of the action. If this episode resonated with you, we’d love to hear from you and also see you at our sixth live event on how professionals, companies, and India keep their edge as AI gets more powerful. It's on August 1 at the Bangalore International Centre in Indiranagar. Livestream tickets are available if you can't make it in person and prices go up soon. Here are all the details: https://the-ken.com/events/intelligen... ( https://the-ken.com/events/intelligen... ) — This episode was produced by Vidhatri Rao and edited by Rajiv CN. — Zeus, the mascot of Zero Shot, was generated using AI. Everything else is made by humans, just like all articles, columns, newsletters, and other podcasts created by The Ken. — Write to us at [email protected]. We are all ears. — Additional material: https://snscratchpad.com/posts/lookin... ( https://snscratchpad.com/posts/lookin... )https://snscratchpad.com/posts/revers... ( https://snscratchpad.com/posts/revers... )https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-t... ( https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-t... ) Zero Shot (Private) Episode 44 July 22, 2026 ★ Episode details: https://share.transistor.fm/s/386652a4 ★ Additional episodes: https://the-ken.com/zero-shot

Fireside Ventures' Kanwal Singh on the consumer-brands bet nobody believed in, why "for a 5x, nob...
▶︎

Fireside Ventures' Kanwal Singh on the consumer-brands bet nobody believed in, why "for a 5x, nob...

Ilya Sutskever – We're moving from the age of scaling to the age of research
▶︎

Ilya Sutskever – We're moving from the age of scaling to the age of research

Your Phone Is Destroying Your Sense of Meaning | Arthur Brooks [ARC 2026]
▶︎

Your Phone Is Destroying Your Sense of Meaning | Arthur Brooks [ARC 2026]

Agents changed everything about hiring except the outcome
▶︎

Agents changed everything about hiring except the outcome

Razorpay CEO Harshil Mathur on how agentic commerce will unfold in India
▶︎

Razorpay CEO Harshil Mathur on how agentic commerce will unfold in India

20 AI Concepts Explained in 40 Minutes
▶︎

20 AI Concepts Explained in 40 Minutes

China let its AI industry run wild to build the best models. Now, it wants control
▶︎

China let its AI industry run wild to build the best models. Now, it wants control

Amsterdam Just Keeps Getting Awesome
▶︎

Amsterdam Just Keeps Getting Awesome

The REAL reason the US can’t beat Iran
▶︎

The REAL reason the US can’t beat Iran

The Hole In Your Brain That Makes You Doomscroll
▶︎

The Hole In Your Brain That Makes You Doomscroll

WeRecoverData Threatened To Sue Me For Exposing Their Google Maps Coordinated Abuse Network
▶︎

WeRecoverData Threatened To Sue Me For Exposing Their Google Maps Coordinated Abuse Network

Last Lecture Series: “How to Win Without Crushing Your Soul” - Graham Weaver
▶︎

Last Lecture Series: “How to Win Without Crushing Your Soul” - Graham Weaver

Is the Self an Illusion?
▶︎

Is the Self an Illusion?

Accelerate Learning & Increase Cognitive Capacity | Dr. Tommy Wood
▶︎

Accelerate Learning & Increase Cognitive Capacity | Dr. Tommy Wood

The health trends outpacing regulation and putting people at risk | Four Corners Documentary
▶︎

The health trends outpacing regulation and putting people at risk | Four Corners Documentary

Why Netflix is betting on systems thinkers—not specialists—in the AI era | Elizabeth Stone (CPTO)
▶︎

Why Netflix is betting on systems thinkers—not specialists—in the AI era | Elizabeth Stone (CPTO)

India's "family" problem
▶︎

India's "family" problem

OpenAI's next product is a companion. Its own research says that's the problem
▶︎

OpenAI's next product is a companion. Its own research says that's the problem

Keynote: After the AI Hype – What’s Real, and What’s Next - Richard Campbell - 2026
▶︎

Keynote: After the AI Hype – What’s Real, and What’s Next - Richard Campbell - 2026

This Stops You From Being Broke (and it works fast) | Jamie Sea
▶︎

This Stops You From Being Broke (and it works fast) | Jamie Sea