Generative AI (Gen AI)

Generative AI (Gen AI) is a type of AI that uses an counterintuitively large data sets to train itself to behave in a way that allows it to understand and emulate human data. Hence the misguided name “large language models” (LLMs). It’s misguided because Generative AI doesn’t actually speak or understand language it is exposed to; it merely recognizes statistical patterns once it translates language (or imagery, sound, etc) into data.

Gen AI is inherently incapable of autonomous thought but if properly designed, can give the impression of thought in response to human prompts.

Generative AI is a useful technology but difficult to leverage efficiently due to its the high cost of creation, training, and hosting. Also problematic is that companies which produce Generative AI products are tempted to violate copyright laws to fulfll their need to supply “training data”, appropriating content that doesn’t belong to them.

Nevertheless, Gen AI and innovations built on top of it (eg Agentic AI) are disruptive and significant.