"AI" Ain't What It Used To Be

Happy Monday, Normal People of the World!

Before we head into another week together, I wanted to take a moment to say THANK YOU to everyone who has subscribed, and for those of you just tuning in, welcome to the family! These past few weeks have blown me away with the growth + community that’s formed around this simple idea that AI is for normal people.

If you haven’t already, make sure to follow us on Instagram as well @aifornormalpeople – we plan to share, connect, and offer more chances for community participation there! 🫂

Now, onto this today’s newsletter….

The world of artificial intelligence can feel intimidating for a lot of reasons, but perhaps most of all is the sheer amount of vocabulary required to comprehend a single sentence.

For example, a typical writeup for this week’s news might read something like this:

“Last week, Mark Zuckerburg stated that his company, Meta — creators of the popular open source LLM, Llama — have a new, singular goal: creating AGI (and he claims they have the GPU to do it).”

If most of that sounded like absolute gibberish to you, you’re not crazy and you’re also not alone. That’s why this week we’re going to pull back the curtain on a few of the most important terms to know in AI, what they mean, and why they matter so much.

As a brief introduction, let’s start with the very basics:

What is AI?

Of course there’s the literal definition of the word: Artificial Intelligence – but I’m assuming you had that much covered. Beyond that, the water gets a little murky.

Although I suppose the best way to get to know someone is to ask them directly – here’s what ChatGPT has to say on the matter:

The term "Artificial Intelligence" was officially introduced in 1956 by John McCarthy, a computer scientist, at a conference at Dartmouth College. It was a way to describe this new and exciting idea of computers not just doing calculations, but also making decisions and learning, kind of like how our brains work.

I don’t need to tell you this – but a lot has changed since the 1950s, yet the phrase lives on. And as computers have gotten smarter, they’ve also become more ubiquitous. The problem with “AI” as a term is that it could technically describe about a million different things we engage with everyday now. Everything from your social media feed to your spam filter are powered by some form of “AI.”

But I don’t think any of that is what we mean when we say AI (my full opinion this coming Friday). Each day this week, we’re going to unpack one, small piece of what AI really is – from the physical chips to its training and the way we access it. By the time the weekend is here, you’ll be ready to talk AI gibberish with the best of ‘em. 💬 🤖 ❤️

Oh and just because you guys seemed to really get a kick out of the AI covers last week, here’s another great one to start your Monday off strong.

See you bright and early tomorrow morning!

Onward,

Brady Fowlkes

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