What Does AI Really Do?

AI Uses Patterns to Predict

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a type of technology that allows computers to learn from experience, much like how humans do. Think about when you were young and learning how to recognize different animals. At first, you probably didn’t know what a cat or dog was, but after seeing many pictures and real-life examples, you started to notice patterns. You learned that cats usually have pointy ears, shorter noses, and are often smaller, while dogs come in all shapes and sizes and have different features. The more you saw, the better you got at telling them apart.

AI works in a similar way for computers. When you give a computer lots of examples, like pictures of cats and dogs, it starts to look for patterns. It might notice that cats often have shorter noses and that dogs tend to have a wider variety of sizes. Over time, as it sees more and more examples, the computer learns to get better at recognizing these patterns and becomes more accurate in telling if a picture is of a cat or a dog.

The interesting thing is that the computer figures this out by itself! We don’t have to tell it about the exact rules for identifying a cat or a dog. Instead, it looks at the patterns in the data and learns from it. The more data it gets, the better it becomes at making decisions or predictions.

This type of AI is called Machine Learning. There are various types of AI, and we will discuss the other types in later discussions.

Watch a brief video from Oxford University explaining Machine Learning (ML) AI. The video provides an example of how ML AI can be used to identify pictures of dogs and cats.

Experience the "Bananameter" app, an AI powered by Machine Learning that can determine whether a banana is ripe for consumption, still unripe, or overripe.

For those interested in creating their own "Bananameter" application, Barron Webster, the creator of the "Bananameter" ML AI app, provides comprehensive instructions on how to do so. Teachable Machine Tutorial: Bananameter | by Barron Webster | Medium