Everyone is talking about it - Artificial Intelligence. It sounds like something taken out of a sci-fi movie and the questions keep piling up. What is it? What can it do? Will it takes our jobs? Can computers now think for themselves? Do they have a conciousness? Don't worry - in this article we will demystify AI and you will soon have a better understanding of what it is! Let's break it down!
AI for beginners - a short introduction & guide
The basis of AI is Machine Learning and Deep learning, don't worry to much about the differences of these term at the moment. This technology basically means that instead of programming a computer (or machine) to do certain tasks in a certain order, you program the machine to teach itself how to achieve a certain goal. Take the video below for example. Here the machine has been programmed to learn how to play Super Mario Bros - have a look!
As you can see, it is not very good in the beginning. In fact, it is quite shit and it takes a really long time and a lot of training before it gets better. But eventually the machine has taught itself how to win this level of the game. Once you have trained the machine a ridiculous amount of times, it will be able to win on completly new levels based on previous experience. Hey - sounds a bit like human learning doesn't it? 😉
What is AI then?
So this is not that easy to answer, many different very intelligent people have different defintions and there are different levels of AI. Let's focus on IBM's defintion of AI - which I find quite accurate.
"Artificial intelligence, or AI, is technology that enables computers and machines to simulate human intelligence and problem-solving capabilities."
So, AI uses a more advanced form of Machine Learning called Deep Learning which is supposed to simulate the human brain, these are called neural networks. A neural network is trained on a massive amount of data in order to achieve certain tasks. Let's take som examples!
Netflix uses machine learning and deep learning to recommend movie and series for you to watch
Spotify uses it to create playlists for you.
AI is used to build autonomous vehicles, or cars that can drive around by themselves
AI is used in virtual robots, such as a customer service chat
As you can see - AI is already all around us. What can we learn from that? Well.... AI is perhaps not that new. In fact, the term machine learning (which is the foundation of AI) was coined in 1959.... quite a long time ago. 🙂
Generative AI (genAI)
Now, let's talk about one particular type of AI that's generating a lot of buzz: Generative AI. Think of Generative AI as the Picasso of the AI world – it creates things, often in the form of images, music, or even text, that seem like they were made by humans.
But how does it work? Well, Generative AI uses neural networks, which are trained on vast amounts of data and learn to generate new content by identifying and replicating patterns.
Take our friend chatgpt for example, it has been trained (like the super mario video) on massive amounts of data, and after enough training sessions it has taught itself how to write human like text. For example, it has helped me co-write many parts of this article. Today, genAI can create text, images, voice, music and video that looks and sounds human made.
We may soon see AI-generated music hitting the top of the charts, AI-written novels becoming bestsellers, and AI-created movies winning Oscars. The possibilities are endless! 🔥
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