An AI Dictionary for Practical Engineering Decisions
Twenty-five AI terms explained through what they mean, what they change and the limits to keep in mind.
Raj Dalal
Advisor
Raj Dalal is an advisor to Ryzolv.
Articles by Raj Dalal
Production AI: Design for the Failure Paths
How to handle incomplete tasks, uncertain external writes and operational recovery when an AI prototype becomes a working system.
Connecting AI to Existing Business Systems
How to integrate AI with established software through narrow interfaces, explicit data ownership and tested recovery paths.
Managing Context in Enterprise AI Systems
How to select, preserve and validate the information an AI workflow needs without confusing a context window with durable memory.
Designing Model-Agnostic AI Applications
How to separate model interfaces from business logic while testing the real limits of portability and provider changes.
Finding the Real Cost of an AI Workflow
Measure model calls, retrieval, retries, tool activity and human review to understand cost per completed task.
Taking an AI Pilot into Production
A staged approach to integration, acceptance testing, rollout and operating ownership without treating a pilot as proof of readiness.
RAG: What Retrieval Can and Cannot Solve
How retrieval-augmented generation connects models to business knowledge, and where access, freshness and answer quality can still fail.
RAG vs Fine-Tuning: Choose the Right Intervention
A practical comparison of retrieval and fine-tuning, including evaluation, data handling and when the two approaches belong together.
Closing the Reliability Gap in AI Systems
Why plausible answers need source checks, software validation, observable outcomes and an operating process around them.
When On-Premise AI Makes Sense
A practical comparison of private and hosted AI, covering data flows, operating costs, security responsibilities and deployment constraints.