Level 0 · Curious
What is AI, really?
It isn't one thing: it's Russian dolls, one inside the other.
When someone says "AI" they may mean very different things. The easiest way to sort it out is to think of Russian dolls.
The big doll is artificial intelligence: any machine doing something only people used to do. Inside it is machine learning: machines that learn from examples instead of hand-written rules. Further in, deep learning, which uses networks with many layers. And at the center, generative AI: ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini, which create text, images and voice.
Try it today
Ask ChatGPT: "Explain the difference between AI, machine learning and generative AI using examples from my home."
Test yourself
Netflix recommends a show. Which doll is it?
- Generative AI
- Machine learning
- None, it's magic
See the answer
Machine learning. It learns from what you and similar people watched. It doesn't create anything new: it predicts what you'll like.
If you lead a team
In a meeting, when someone says "let's add AI", ask which of the four. It changes the cost, the risk and who builds it.