Learn / Learn AI
Learn AI in 8 steps
The basics to understand and use artificial intelligence, without jargon and in a few minutes.
What is artificial intelligence?
They are programs that have learned from huge numbers of examples (texts, images, code) and with that they can write, answer, summarize, translate or create images.
They don't think like a person: they predict the most likely answer based on what they've seen.
«The sky is…»
What is a model?
It's the «brain» behind it: a huge file with everything it has learned.
Each company has several (for example, OpenAI's GPT, Anthropic's Claude or Google's Gemini), and new versions come out every few weeks. That's why on this site we talk about models and also about the apps where you use them.
What is a chatbot?
It's the app or website where you talk to a model: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Le Chat or Meta AI.
You type (or speak) and it answers. Behind each app there are one or more models, and the app chooses which one to use depending on your plan.
Open and closed: what's the difference?
A closed model can only be used through the app or service of the company that made it.
An open model (open source) can be downloaded and used on your own computer, for free and without your data leaving home. Closed ones tend to be the most powerful; open ones, the most private and cheapest.
- Only from the company's app or API
- Usually the most powerful
- Your data travels to their servers
- You download it and use it on your computer
- Free and unlimited
- Your data stays at home
Why are some paid?
Running these models needs very expensive computers.
That's why apps offer a free plan with limits (a number of messages every few hours) and paid plans with more usage and better models. Open models are free, but the «cost» is having a computer with a good graphics card.
Privacy: the basics
Everything you write in an AI app travels to that company's servers.
Don't paste passwords, medical data or other people's data unless necessary. Check in each app's settings whether your conversations are used for training and whether you can turn it off. If you need total privacy, use a model open source on your computer.
- Passwords
- Medical data
- Other people's data
- Whether your chats train the model
- Whether you can turn it off
- An open-source model on your computer
They get things wrong (and very confidently)
AIs sometimes make up data, quotes or links and state them with total confidence.
For important things (health, money, law, school work), always check what it tells you against a reliable source.
Always check with a reliable source:
How to ask for things
The more context you give it, the better it answers: say who it's for, what tone you want, what length, and add an example if you can.
If you don't like the answer, ask it to change it: «shorter», «more formal», «explain it to me as if I were 12».
Vague«Write an email.»
With context«Write a friendly email to my boss asking to postpone the deadline to Friday. Professional tone, 5 lines.»
Words you'll hear
In one sentence.
- Token
- The piece of text an AI works with (roughly ¾ of a word).
- Context
- How much text it can take into account at once: the conversation and the documents you give it.
- Hallucination
- When the AI makes something up and presents it as true.
- Prompt
- What you write to the AI: your question or your instructions.
- Agent
- An AI that doesn't just answer, but does tasks for you: searching, filling in, coding…
- Multimodal
- Able to understand or create several kinds of things: text, images, audio or video.