
Understanding The New Words of AI: Harness, Layer, Fabric, Surface, And More…
From Josh Bersin by Josh Bersin
June 1, 2026 · 20 min
About this episode
Josh Bersin discusses the new terminology emerging in the field of AI and explains their meanings in a non-technical way.
I’ve decided that the biggest challenge we have in AI is now keeping track of the new words being created. Words like harness, layer, mesh, vector, orchestrator, tools, surface, memory – they all mean very special things. And engineers and marketing people keep dreaming up new ones (spine? pattern? control plane? MCP? LangChain? headless? MCP? mesh? ontology?). In this podcast I do my best to explain what these words mean, and give you a non-technical understanding of how all this stuff works. If people like this I’ll keep you up to date on all these new words. Additional Information (Note that all our research and podcasts are in Galileo) AI Prices Are Going Up, Up, Up – And What This Means For Enterprise AI The Reinvention of Workday: From System of Record to Platform of Agents Could Microsoft Win The War For Enterprise AI? The AI vs. Labor Economy, Why Benefits Are Being Cut, The Role of Legacy Systems The Context Layer (Semantic Layer) In Enterprise AI (And Where Business Rules Go) Jensen Huang’s Taipei Speech (filled with this jargon) The Superagent for HR: Galileo Mars Release
People in this episode
Host: Josh Bersin
Topics covered
- AI terminology
- understanding AI concepts
- non-technical AI explanations
- enterprise AI
- AI challenges
- new AI words
Keywords
- AI
- harness
- layer
- mesh
- vector
- orchestrator
- tools
- memory
- control plane
- LangChain
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Galileo, Microsoft, Workday
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