A "paradigm" is a design/approach to building algorithms.
With the right pattern recognition, they let use solve a wide range of problems using the same fundamental logic.
One such paradigm is the idea of "Divide And Conquer".
As the name suggests, we split a large problem into a series of smaller problems, solve them (often recursively), then recombine them to find our solution.
This is a useful mental model across all fields, but it's specifically useful in the realm of AI.
But that's enough discussion of algorithms for now.
So let's take brief detour into data structures (bear with me: it won't take long, and you need it to understand what comes next).