Exploring Generative AI: What It Is and How It Works for Us
If you know anything about me, you know my favorite movie series is Star Wars. It perfectly combines technology and philosophy in a way that really lights me up.
Plus there’s The Force?—?you know that, “energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together.”
One of the coolest things about the Force is the ability for Force users to seemingly predict the movements of others, giving them lighting fast reflexes to dodge punches, lightsaber strikes, and even laser blasts.
The truth is they’re so in-tune with their surroundings, the Force allows them see and sense seemingly imperceptible powers.
Generative AI is kind of the same way.
Let’s take a closer look at what it is and how it works?—?I’ll try to be as non-technical as possible!
What is Generative AI?
AI stands for Artificial Intelligence, and it’s kind of like the brainpower for computers. It lets them learn from the information they’re given, then use that knowledge to do different tasks. It’s taking in as much info as humans do (or more), and depending on how powerful the computer is, it can process that info way faster that humans can.
Generative AI is a special kind of AI that can put its learning to use by generating new things. It could be art, music, stories, or even fashion designs, not just smart sentences.
One of the top ways generative AI shows off its chops is through large language models. Think of these models as very well-read machines. They’ve scanned and learned from a mountain of text material so they can make really good guesses about what word probably comes next based on the words before it.
The most common example of these smart machines is ChatGPT?—?it may be the best at understanding and generating text.
Prompts: You Need to Tell the AI What You Want
Thankfully, Generative AI can’t act alone. These models need a little steering to work well, so we need to ask them the right way or give them the right sort of push, what we call a prompt. The way we phrase a question or instruction can change the answers we get!
So, “Give me a list of Jedi” would yield OK results.
But, “Give me a list of the Jedi strongest in the force, and why. Pull not just from movies, but TV shows, and extended universe books,” would yield better results.
The best way to craft a good prompt (some would call this prompt engieering, but feels pretty self-aggrandizing to me) is to be as detailed as possible. Don’t just ask plainly for the thing you want. Describe what you want, the scope in which you want it, who it’s for, etc.
Generative AI Use Cases
OK OK?—?so we know what is it. Where do we use it? Well, there are common places, like:
- Chatbots: Think of them as software helpers that can chat with you when you shop online, answering questions or solving issues.
- Content Creation: Some of the online articles you read may have been written with the help of AI. AI can also write poems and movie scripts.
- Translation: Google Translate and similar tools use generative AI to translate one language to another.
But that’s not all?—?Generative AI has been used to in these areas too:
- Art: AI is helping create unique works of art. Some artworks have even been auctioned for big amounts of money.
- Fashion Design: AI can design clothes and predict trends.
- Medicine Making: AI can help invent new medicines by guessing structures of new chemicals.
How to Use Generative AI
If you think that all this sounds cool, you might want to give it a try ! There are some tools that even non-experts can use, like:
- OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Bard, and Bing Chat for research and writing.
- MidJourney and DALL-E for image generation
- Capsho and Castmagic for transcription and summarization of audio/video.
Some fear that AI will take our jobs?—?but I believe they are another tool to help us do our jobs better…Generative AI to the knowledge workers is like the excavator to construction workers. The better you can operate the tool, the more efficient you can be.
So, understanding generative AI and how it works will keep you in the loop and maybe even inspire you to start creating with it! It’s an exciting time to explore the amazing things AI can do.
Exploring Generative AI: What It Is and How It Works for Us was originally published in The Automated Solopreneur on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
