Free courses / AI Zero to Hero / Lesson 1
What AI is and is not
The difference between a useful tool and a magic answer machine.
An AI model learns patterns from enormous numbers of examples and uses them to predict a useful next piece of text, image or sound. That is why it can produce an excellent first draft of almost anything in seconds.
It does not know your circumstances. It cannot check its own work. And a confident answer is not evidence of a correct one. The model is predicting what a good answer usually looks like, which is often, but not always, the same thing as a good answer.
Treat it like a quick, well-read colleague who has never met you and occasionally makes things up without noticing. Useful, as long as you stay in charge.
- It predicts likely text; it does not look things up unless a tool is attached.
- Confidence is a writing style, not a measure of accuracy.
- You bring the context and the judgement.
BEEP / THE MYTH-BUSTER
I once told someone, with total confidence, that a badger was a kind of bird. Nobody corrected me, because I said it so nicely. That is the whole problem with us in one sentence.
Try it
Think of one small job that eats ten minutes of your week. Write down what a decent first attempt would look like. That is your guinea pig for the rest of the course.
Progress is saved on this device.
Questions about “What AI is and is not”Asked by readers, answered by us. Open to read them.
Open to load them.
Ask about this page and we will answer it here, where the next person can read it too.
Nobody else can answer you, and you cannot answer anybody else. This is not a forum — we would rather say that than run a room we cannot watch at three in the morning.
Your question goes up with the answer and without your name. Nothing identifies you, ever.
If we cannot answer it we will tell you why, and that one stays between us.