In short
Artificial intelligence (AI) is software that does things which used to need a human mind: recognising a face in a photo, translating text, answering a question, suggesting what film to watch.
"Intelligence" here does not mean the program thinks like a person. It is very good at finding patterns in data.
How it is taught
Ordinary software is given rules written by hand: if this, then do that. With AI nobody writes the rules. It learns from a huge number of examples: texts, photos, recordings of speech.
The program notices which words often appear together, what a cat looks like in a photo, and how two texts on the same topic are alike. Then it applies these patterns to something new it has never seen.
Where you already use AI
The recommendations that pick videos and posts for your feed are AI.
Automatic translation in a browser, voice recognition on a phone, the spam filter in your inbox and keyboard suggestions are AI too.
Chatbots such as ChatGPT or Claude are a separate kind of AI, and the next lesson is about them.
Glossary
- AI
- Programs that do tasks which used to require human intelligence: recognising, translating, answering questions.
- Training a model
- The process of showing a program many examples until it finds the patterns on its own.
- Model
- The result of training: a ready-made skill the program applies to new data.