Halloween edition
Rift Kitten
Hop through the rift and learn how AI works, one small step at a time. Tonight the rift is a tiny bit haunted.
Learn with Rift Kitten (if you dare)
Four tiny lessons. Open one, read it in a minute, and you will know a little more about AI. No jump scares, promise.
All lessons are placeholder copy, pending Lexi's voice.
1 What is AI?
AI, or artificial intelligence, is software that learns patterns from lots of examples instead of following only hand-written rules.
It does not think like a person. It is very good at spotting patterns and making a best guess.
Try this: name one app you use that might use AI, like photo search or voice assistants.
2 How a chatbot guesses the next word
A chatbot writes one small piece of text at a time. Each time, it guesses which word is most likely to come next, based on everything before it.
If you read "The cat sat on the", you probably guess "mat". A chatbot does something similar, millions of times, very fast.
Try this: finish the sentence "Once upon a" and notice how quickly your brain guessed.
3 What is training data?
Training data is the huge pile of examples an AI learns from, like text, pictures or sounds.
What goes in shapes what comes out. If the examples are old, narrow or unfair, the AI can be too.
Try this: think of a topic where older examples might give a wrong answer today.
4 How to spot when AI is wrong
AI can sound sure of itself and still be wrong. This is sometimes called a "hallucination".
- Check important facts with a trusted source.
- Be careful with exact numbers, dates, names and quotes.
- Ask where the information came from, then look it up.
Try this: next time an AI tells you a fact, check it in one other place.
