This article is an easy way for technical and nontechnical professionals to understand the practical fundamentals of AI. The aim is to keep the discussion simple and relatively high-level for everyone without industry jargon.
At its core, an AI model is simply a file stored on a computer. These models can vary in size and complexity:
Fundamentally, AI models take an input and generate an output. That's their primary function.
There are numerous ways to create an AI feature, similar to coding.
Different model types can be mixed and matched to achieve the same result.
There's no single "right way" to implement an AI feature.
Use GPT/LLMs and off-the-shelf models for quick deployment in POCs.
Custom LLMs can be time-consuming and resource-intensive but are best reserved for post-product market fit.
Building custom models for unproven concepts is high risk, with usually low ROI.
When selecting an AI model, consider the following questions:
What specific task are we addressing?
Which Hugging Face model are we considering?
Have we compared different models?
What's the accuracy rate for this model?
What are the operational costs?
What problem are you trying to solve?
Does solving the problem increase ROI?
Is an AI model truly necessary for this task?
Transformers transform one form of data into another. For example:
Popular transformers include GPT, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, DALL-e, GPT4, Lamma, Alpaca, and Claude.
Transformers are versatile. Initially designed for text-related tasks, they have proven effective for many data types, including images, video, and biological sequences.
The critical innovation of transformers is their "attention" mechanism. This allows them to understand the context and relationships between different parts of the input data.
Despite their impressive outputs, transformers are not inherently smart in terms of how humans understand intelligence. Instead of possessing true comprehension or reasoning abilities, they function by memorizing vast amounts of information and using that data to generate plausible guesses. This highlights a fundamental aspect of current AI technology: what appears as "intelligence" is sophisticated pattern recognition and statistical prediction based on enormous datasets rather than genuine understanding or thought.
Text to Image
Diagram -> input text -> output image
Use cases
Audio to Text
Diagram -> input audio -> output text
Use cases
Text to Text
Generate source code
Generate concise product descriptions from detailed specifications
Generate financial reports from raw data
Text to Video
Generate news video summaries from text articles
Convert product manuals into instructional videos
Create animated explainer videos for complex topics
Text to Audio
Despite their capabilities, transformers face significant challenges that are the focus of ongoing research and development. One major concern is addressing biases learned from training data, which can lead to unfair or discriminatory outputs. Researchers are also prioritizing the safety of these AI systems and working to improve their efficiency, as their computational demands can be substantial.
Transformers and other AI models can readily be found on popular machine learning and software development platforms. Hugging Face is a primary hub for accessing and sharing transformer models, offering a vast library of pre-trained models and tools. The widely-used code repository platform GitHub is another valuable resource where developers frequently share transformer implementations and related projects.
Classification is the process of categorizing things based on their characteristics.
Classification approaches are valuable for business problems with large amounts of historical data, including labels, that specify if something is in one group or another.
Binary Classification
Binary classification sorts data into one of two distinct categories, such as yes/no or true/false. It's fundamental in machine learning, useful for spam detection and medical diagnoses, and forms the basis for more complex classification methods.
Outcome options such as:
yes/no,
good/bad,
true/false,
1/0
Use cases:
Multi-Class Classification
Multi-class classification extends the binary concept to situations where data can belong to one of several categories. It's crucial for problems like image recognition and sentiment analysis, where multiple outcome options are possible.
Outputs options such as:
[neutral, happy, sad, confused]
[blue, red, green, yellow, pink]
[sports, business, legal, tech]
Use cases:
Analyzing customer sentiment in AI-powered customer service
Evaluating machinery parts' conditions
Categorizing news articles into topics like politics, sports, entertainment, or technology.
Multi-Label Classification
Multi-label classification assigns multiple categories or labels to a single data point simultaneously. This approach is valuable for scenarios with overlapping characteristics, such as categorizing movies by genre or tagging social media posts.
Use cases:
Describing locations (e.g., San Diego → [beach, ocean, city, California])
Tagging online retail products
Categorizing machinery components
Imbalanced Classification
Imbalanced classification deals with datasets where one class is significantly underrepresented compared to the other. It's critical in scenarios like fraud detection or rare disease diagnosis, requiring special techniques to ensure the minority class isn't overlooked.
Use case:
Classification in AI offers powerful tools for categorizing data, with applications ranging from simple binary decisions to complex multi-label assignments. Its versatility is evident in healthcare, customer service, and manufacturing. As AI evolves, classification techniques will be increasingly crucial in solving complex business problems and enhancing decision-making processes.
Extraction in AI is a data processing technique that involves identifying and isolating specific pieces of information from larger, often unstructured datasets. This technique can be applied to various data types, including text, images, and audio. The goal is to find relevant details or patterns that are useful for analysis or further processing.
Named Entity Recognition (Text)
Name Entity Recognition (NER) is a Natural Language Processing technique that identifies and extracts specific information from text. It enables machines to understand and categorize essential elements within unstructured text data.
Use cases:
Email analysis: Extracting purpose, sender, recipient, and timestamp
Business listings: Identifying location, price, broker, and cash flow
Customer Support: Categorizing requests, complaints, and questions
Healthcare: Quickly extracting essential information from medical reports
Search engines: Analyzing search queries and other texts
Human Resources: Categorizing internal processes and summarizing CVs
Image Segmentation
Image Segmentation (also used in video segmentation) is a computer vision technique that divides an image into multiple segments or regions, each corresponding to a distinct object or part of the image. This process involves analyzing the image's pixels and grouping them based on shared characteristics such as color, texture, or intensity. The resulting segments are then labeled, allowing for the identification and isolation of specific objects or areas within the image.
Use cases:
Autonomous driving
Analysis of railway tracks to detect upcoming maintenance needs
Background removal in images Medical imaging analysis (e.g., X-rays, MRIs)
Similarity models in AI quantify how alike different pieces of data are. This allows systems to find related items, match queries to relevant answers, and group similar data. Similarity models are crucial for applications like search engines, recommendation systems, and data clustering, enabling AI to recognize patterns and relationships across large datasets efficiently.
Note: There are differences between embedding (such as BERT) and vector (such as all-MiniLM-L6-v2) models. Both, while different, may be used for similarity-related use cases. This article will use the terms vectorization, embeddings, and similarity synonymously to simplify understanding.
Vectorization in AI can be applied to various data types, including images, audio, and text. This process converts these diverse data types into numerical vector representations, allowing AI models to process and analyze them mathematically. By transforming complex, unstructured data into vectors, AI systems can more easily compare, classify, and manipulate this information for tasks such as image recognition, speech processing, and natural language understanding.
Semantic search is an advanced information retrieval technique focusing on understanding a query's intent, contextual meaning, and relationships between concepts rather than just matching keywords. This approach enables more accurate and relevant search results, even when the exact search terms aren't in the target content.
Semantic search is often used for RAG-based systems. These systems find the top-N number of documents and summarize them to provide a suitable answer. This is how most generative search results are generated today.
AI is a powerful tool that, when used correctly, can solve complex problems efficiently. This article provides a straightforward overview of AI fundamentals for both technical and non-technical professionals, aiming to demystify the subject without relying on industry jargon. It breaks down common misconceptions about AI, emphasizing that while AI is powerful, it augments rather than replaces human capabilities, and its basics can be understood by anyone willing to learn a few key concepts.
This guide explains AI basics for both technical and non-technical professionals. Here are the key points:
AI is a versatile tool accessible to professionals across various fields.