Grokking Modern AI Fundamentals
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1.4 Understanding AI at a Glance
Table of Contents

The Big Four: AI, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Generative AI

Key Historical Milestones: Symbolic Beginnings to Generative Breakthroughs

If artificial intelligence (AI) feels like complex technical jargon, this section will help you understand it well.

We’ll keep it simple, focusing on what AI is, how it evolved, and why it’s such a game-changer today.

The Big Four: AI, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Generative AI

  1. Artificial Intelligence (AI)

    • AI is the broad field of creating machines or software that can perform tasks that normally require human intelligence. This includes understanding language, recognizing images, making decisions, and more.

  2. Machine Learning (ML)

    • A subset of AI where algorithms learn from data rather than following hard-coded rules. It then uses these patterns to make predictions about new, unseen data.

  3. Deep Learning (DL)

    • A specialized branch of machine learning that uses “deep” neural networks (inspired loosely by the human brain’s structure) to handle complex tasks.

  4. Generative AI

    • AI models that are specifically designed to create (or “generate”) new content—whether that’s text, images, music, or videos.

Key Historical Milestones: Symbolic Beginnings to Generative Breakthroughs

AI didn’t appear overnight. It’s the result of decades of research, bold predictions, and a few missteps.

Although it started somewhere in the 1950s, here we will not discuss the entire history, rather, touch on the evolution in the past 15 years.

Here’s a concise timeline to ground you in the field’s evolution:

2000s: Data-Driven Shift

  • Machine Learning Rises: Cheaper computing power and more data paved the way for ML to shine.

  • Online Recommendation Engines: Tech giants used ML to personalize content (e.g., Google Search, Amazon product suggestions).

AI Evolution
AI Evolution

2012–2020: The Deep Learning Revolution

  • ImageNet Breakthrough (2012): Neural networks outperformed traditional methods in image recognition.

  • Rapid Progress: Speech recognition, facial recognition, and other tasks improved dramatically thanks to deep neural networks.

2020s: Generative AI Explodes

  • GPT & Friends: Large language models garnered global attention with near-human-like text generation.

  • Creative AI: Systems like DALL·E and Midjourney produced stunning artworks, fueling debates about AI’s role in creativity.

  • Agentic AI: Early attempts at AI “agents” that can plan, execute tasks, and even chain their own prompts together with minimal human intervention.

Feeling more comfortable with the big picture of AI?

We’re just getting started!

In the upcoming chapters, we’ll zoom in on how these technologies work in practice.

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Table of Contents

The Big Four: AI, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Generative AI

Key Historical Milestones: Symbolic Beginnings to Generative Breakthroughs