system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
What is an algorithm from a theoretical CS standpoint? Like in the context of FSM's, Turing Machines Lambda Calculus etc, what is an algorithm, or more generally a process?
gpt
'Algorithm' is the term for a sequence of unambiguously determined actions. FSMs, TMs, lambda calculi, are mathematical models that define what a computation is. Algorithms can be implemented in them in an analogous way to how they are implemented in an actual computer, except that they are abstract objects instead of physical ones.

'Process' is more of a real-world term for how we segment CPU runtime such that we can think about different programs running independently. Processes generally run indefinitely continuously receiving input and returning output, so those models don't apply directly. We can in principle adapt them without much difficulty, but that approach hasn't turned out to be useful, so we use other models depending on what exactly you need to analyze.