What people mean by AI
A calculator gives the same answer every time. A photo app can spot a cat. Are they the same kind of machine?
Step 1 of 4
- A calculator: one fixed rule. 2 + 2 = 4.
- A photo app is shown hundreds of cat photos.
- It finds its own pattern in them.
- Now it spots a new cat photo it has never seen.
No: a calculator follows a fixed rule, but a photo app learns.
AI is a program that learns from examples. A program is a list of steps for a computer. The full name is artificial intelligence. Nobody writes a rule for "what a cat looks like". The program finds the pattern itself. A pattern is what many cat photos have in common.
Slide the new mango. Machine A has a fixed rule, one that never changes. Machine B learned from labelled mangoes, each marked ripe or unripe.
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