When diving into a new subject, there's often a whole new lingo to learn. AI is no exception. One thing I've noticed when talking to people about AI is that if I say anything beyond "ChatGPT," I might as well be speaking Elvish.
There's clearly much more to AI than ChatGPT, and I'm gonna try to break down and demystify some common terminology in simple terms and explanations.
So, to help bridge this knowledge gap, I've put together a list of key AI terms and concepts. We'll cover these over a few posts, so let's kick things off with the fundamentals:
AI (Artificial Intelligence): This is the big umbrella term that almost anything and everything can fall under. AI refers to a computer's ability to do tasks that typically need human logic. We're talking visual perception, understanding speech, decision-making, and even translating languages.
Machine Learning: Just as it sounds, this is a subset of AI that deals with creating systems that can learn and improve from experience without being explicitly programmed. Basically, it's like teaching a computer to learn on its own, and it's the foundation for a ton of AI applications we use today.
Deep Learning: This is machine learning on steroids. It uses "neural networks" with multiple layers (hence "deep") to analyze all sorts of data. It's particularly great at finding patterns in messy, unstructured data like images, sound, and text.
Neural Networks: These are the building blocks of deep learning, basically systems inspired by real neural networks (our brains). Think of them as a bunch of interconnected nodes passing information around, kind of like the neurons firing in your brain.
NLP (Natural Language Processing): This is the branch of AI that deals with making computers understand and generate human language. It's what allows chatbots and virtual assistants to chat with you without seeming robotic.
LLM (Large Language Model): This is what all the buzz is about. Large Language Models are trained on massive amounts of text data (basically the entire internet). They can understand, generate, and manipulate human-like text. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini are all examples of LLMs. NLP is a big part of what makes LLMs feel so smart.
GenAI (Generative AI): GenAI refers to AI systems that can create new content, like text (LLMs - ChatGPT), images (DALL-E), video (Sora), or even music.
That's it for our first batch of AI lingo, hope this helps clarify some terms and concepts for you, in the next part will dig deeper into more advanced concepts.
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