A.I. update - high tech learning with Dr Lucy Andrew

Facts number one.

Artificial intelligence is about using computers to do things that humans can do.

Yes, and if it sounds like we're repeating ourselves, that's because this was fact number one in our last episode about AI.

This fact hasn't changed, but there have been a lot of developments in AI technology since that episode was released in June 2023.

The type of AI we're focusing on today is generative AI, which includes things like ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, and Google Gemini.

Generative AI can write books, make pictures, and even create videos.

Facts number two, big tech companies are spending billions of dollars on AI.

Companies like Google, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and OpenAI are using AI a lot more, and they're building computer systems to use AI even more in the future.

For example, internet search engines like Google and Bing offer an AI overview that summarizes information based on your internet search, and this first appeared in 2024.

It might only take you a few seconds to type an internet search, but behind that AI overview is a lot of computing power.

Some people think AI is only going to get bigger and bigger.

But other people think that the big tech companies are throwing too much money behind AI and it might not pay off as much as they think it will.

Facts number three, AI is expensive because it uses a lot of computing power.

To make generative AI work, an AI system has to be trained with lots and lots of information.

This can be information from websites as well as digitized books and pictures and videos.

Processing all of this information uses lots and lots of computer processes in enormous data centers.

Just like a laptop needs to be charged with electricity, data centres need to run on electricity, but these data centres can be absolutely enormous.

Imagine filling a football stadium with very powerful computers and how much electricity it would take to keep them all running.

These data centres also get really hot, so they need access to lots of water to keep them cool so the computers don't overheat.

Factor number four, AI agents are computer systems that can solve problems using AI.

Whereas older AI systems could only use one type of information, maybe some text or some images, newer systems are called multimodal because they can use lots of different types of data like text as well as images and video and sound and computer code.

AI agents can use these different types of information to complete tasks that have lots of different steps.

For example, an AI agent could check emails and write responses, or it could create summaries of daily news stories on a particular topic, or keep track of the products on supermarket shelves and order new stock from suppliers when things are running out.

Facts number five.

AI is used by scientists to speed up scientific discoveries.