Software & computer programs
Publication dates and source age
Sources counted: 6
Newest dated source: 2025-03-27
At least one source was published within the 18-month window.
Assessed at this edition's evidence cutoff: 2026-09-15. 18-month boundary: 2025-03-15.
Some publication dates are unknown; the newest dated source may not be the newest source overall.
Publication age does not tell us whether a claim is still valid. Reading an old source again does not make its publication date newer. An update date does not establish that the passage we used was updated.
Open in the glossary Reading notes · Structured record
In plain language
Computer programs tell a machine what operations to carry out. Software includes those programs and their associated data. [1] [2]
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Limits & distinctions
Being software does not make a model’s behavior easy to explain. Interpretability research studies how its learned computations produce particular outputs. [6]
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A fuller explanation
A calculator program might multiply two numbers using a written rule. A language-model program runs calculations using numerical settings learned during training. Both are executed by computer hardware. [3] [4] [5] [2]
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How it relates to the map
Map context: this explains how systems work; it is not a position for or against faster AI development. [2] [4]
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https://theaiatlas.org/ideas/software/
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Sources and what we read
1. Computer
Publication dates and source age
Sources counted: 1
Publication dates are unavailable.
Assessed at this edition's evidence cutoff: 2026-09-15. 18-month boundary: 2025-03-15.
Some publication dates are unknown; the newest dated source may not be the newest source overall.
Publication age does not tell us whether a claim is still valid. Reading an old source again does not make its publication date newer. An update date does not establish that the passage we used was updated.
Read the glossary definition identifying a computer as a device that processes digital data according to program instructions. The page attributes the definition to NIST SP 800-34 Rev. 1; that full contingency-planning document was not reviewed. Live glossary publication date unspecified.
2. software
Publication dates and source age
Sources counted: 1
Publication dates are unavailable.
Assessed at this edition's evidence cutoff: 2026-09-15. 18-month boundary: 2025-03-15.
Some publication dates are unknown; the newest dated source may not be the newest source overall.
Publication age does not tell us whether a claim is still valid. Reading an old source again does not make its publication date newer. An update date does not establish that the passage we used was updated.
Read the definitions of software as programs and associated data, and the distinction from physical hardware. The glossary aggregates several contextual definitions, including entries for related hardware and firmware terms; it is not a single universal definition. Referenced standards were not read in full. Live page publication date unspecified.
3. Tool use
Publication dates and source age
Sources counted: 1
Publication dates are unavailable.
Assessed at this edition's evidence cutoff: 2026-09-15. 18-month boundary: 2025-03-15.
Some publication dates are unknown; the newest dated source may not be the newest source overall.
Publication age does not tell us whether a claim is still valid. Reading an old source again does not make its publication date newer. An update date does not establish that the passage we used was updated.
Read tool descriptions, model-generated call requests, application execution and returning results to the chat. Example functions were not run. Used for the separation between requesting and executing an action; live page publication date unspecified.
4. Models
Publication dates and source age
Sources counted: 1
Publication dates are unavailable.
Assessed at this edition's evidence cutoff: 2026-09-15. 18-month boundary: 2025-03-15.
Some publication dates are unknown; the newest dated source may not be the newest source overall.
Publication age does not tell us whether a claim is still valid. Reading an old source again does not make its publication date newer. An update date does not establish that the passage we used was updated.
Read architecture, weights, checkpoints, loading and saving. Used to distinguish a model's structure and learned values from the application around it. Example code was read, not executed; live page publication date unspecified.
5. What is Machine Learning?
Publication dates and source age
Sources counted: 1
Publication dates are unavailable.
Assessed at this edition's evidence cutoff: 2026-09-15. 18-month boundary: 2025-03-15.
Some publication dates are unknown; the newest dated source may not be the newest source overall.
Publication age does not tell us whether a claim is still valid. Reading an old source again does not make its publication date newer. An update date does not establish that the passage we used was updated.
Read the introduction, model definition, supervised and unsupervised learning, and generative AI sections. Examples illustrate categories rather than measured accuracy. Updated date follows the page; initial publication is unspecified.
6. Circuit Tracing: Revealing Computational Graphs in Language Models
Publication dates and source age
Sources counted: 1
Newest dated source: 2025-03-27
At least one source was published within the 18-month window.
Assessed at this edition's evidence cutoff: 2026-09-15. 18-month boundary: 2025-03-15.
Publication age does not tell us whether a claim is still valid. Reading an old source again does not make its publication date newer. An update date does not establish that the passage we used was updated.
Read introduction, method overview and limitations including reconstruction errors, graph complexity, global circuits and mechanistic faithfulness. The authors' replacement-model analyses reveal selected mechanisms; they do not provide a complete explanation of all behavior. Later attention-tracing work is cited alongside this paper to avoid treating its missing-attention limitation as a permanent field-wide result.
Edition and machine-readable evidence
Content version 0.20.0. Evidence cutoff 2026-09-15; this does not mean every source was read on that day.
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