This is clearly not limited to an MBA student interested in Tech, but I’ve heard so many different terms when it comes to AI that I feel we sometimes just nod and smile at them.
“Improved Inference”
“’The Transformer Architecture”
“We need more GPUs.”
“AgenticAI is changing the world.”
“GenAI is here to stay.”
“What’s your RAG strategy?”
“Agent will just do that now.”
“We can just do this with vibe coding.”
What does this all mean? Are these words made up? Is this engineer/other MBA making fun of me? Maybe, but no, these are all relevant words and not the latest product from Rockwell Automation (Watch the video to get the joke).
I basically didn’t want to just nod and smile, so here I am researching all of this and trying to simplify it so that it sticks for longer in my head.
I’d just like to start by going into What is AI?
The best analogy I've come to think of is that saying something has AI is like calling something a car. Is an apple a car? Nope. Is a Toyota a car? Yeah. You could call it a van too. Is a Rivian a car? For sure. How about a Waymo AV? Yeah, it’s a car with fancy stuff around it, but yeah, it is a car.
Could you go deeper and call something a mini-van, or a four-door sedan, or a weekend car, or even an autonomous vehicle? Of course you can, it’s pretty useful too. But if you have 5 people with you, and they all have carry on bags, are you just going to say you need a car to get somewhere? I guess you can, but the devil is in the details. You need a van with a large trunk to fit it all in. Should it be autonomous or electric or be a regular engine? I guess it depends on other factors.
So you see, AI is a term to encapsulate a way of using data and math and compute to carry out certain tasks. Saying something has AI in it might not be wrong, and in certain situations, you don't need more detail. But it can be incomplete.
So, if someone makes a startup pitch that solves a given problem “Using AI” its like saying we are going to make money by doing business. You're not wrong, but could you expand on it a little?
I realize I haven’t answered any of the questions at the top, but its good to get the marketing term of AI out of the way.