But fully understanding AI can be tricky, especially if you’re not well-versed in tech topics.

So, let’s break down artificial intelligence into its most simple terms.

How does AI work, and how is it being used?

robot standing near giant digital question mark

Miker Rivero/DALL-E/MakeUseOf

Imagine you are learning to ride a bike.

After falling a few times, you start understanding how to balance and pedal simultaneously.

That’s how machine learning, a part of AI, works.

microsoft copilot image creator browser version with four images

It looks at a lot of data and then learns patterns from it.

But even with all this, computers still can’t fully think or understand like humans.

Modern AI systems don’t have common sense, emotions, or consciousness.

microsoft image creator purple sunset on moon example

Microsoft Image Creator/MakeUseOf

These algorithms improve their performance as the number of datasets they learn from increases.

Deep learning, a further subset of machine learning, uses artificial neural networks to make decisions and predictions.

It is designed to mimic how a human brain learns and makes decisions.

The current AI technologies are task-specific and cannot understand context outside their specific programming.

How Is AI Being Used Today?

AI has potential and applications that stretch far beyond the tech realm alone.

Chatbots

Even if you’re not big into tech, you’ve probably heard the name “ChatGPT.

“ChatGPT (short for Chat Generative Pre-transformer)is a generative AI chatbot.

But this isn’t like the chatbots you may have used in the past.

ChatGPT uses artificial intelligence to process natural human language, find data, and provide responses.

HuggingChat, Claude, and Gemini (formerly Bard) are other examples of AI chatbots.

These services all differ in certain ways.

Production and Design

When designing products, many elements must be considered.

These AI text-to-image toolstake a text-based prompt and generate an art piecebased on the request.

DALL-E has evolved a lot since its initial release and is now on its third version, DALL-E 3.

You canuse DALL-E on ChatGPT Plusto generate AI images in your chats.

However, many think that the future of AI is dark and dystopian.

AI can indeed be abused or mishandled, but this is true for any technology.

However, the worry is concentrated on artificial intelligence because of its capabilities.

In January 2023, an individual posted to a hacking forum claiming they had successfullycreated malware using ChatGPT.

At the moment, there are no AI systems that can think on the same level as a human.

Many have predicted what such a machine would look like, but it’s all hypothetical.