Keep hearing AI. I really don't have a clue what it is except you can't eat it....I think.

Close to self thinking technology and a lot of other tasks I don’t see good things coming out of it. I hope I’m wrong but soon the computer will think so the owner won’t have to videos will be about useless for any kind of proof of reality.

Most of what you encounter (text and image generation) is essentially the machine playing Family Feud based on the data it was trained on/has acess to. Best guess based on applied math and big data. We have an AI lab in the research institute where I work, but their work has been nothing but yet another branch of computer science for decades, nothing dramatic or impressive, just some research papers, algorithms, a few people staring at computer screens, writing code or drinking tea, and it was the same everywhere else until everything exploded a few years ago.

By the way, Google put AI in their search. They don't directly advertize it but if you add "for dummies" to anything you search now, it actually does a good job of explaining difficult stuff, and it generates a different text each time.

You can google "what is AI for dummies" and see for yourself. Also teach yourself about neural networks if you are curious.

Short for Artificial Idiocy, I believe.

Artificial Intelligence and accurately named.

Thanks for the responses. I have a bunch of beavers to skin today...how do I get AI to do it for me so I can sip tea (or something stronger) and stay close to the heating fire?

Robots!

Many You Tube videos are AI generated. Easy to tell by the narrators monotone voice and mispronunciation of words with city names being one of the biggest clue. As soon as I realize it is AI, I stop watching it.

It's computer programming programmed by humans. Which means it's not always right with the answers you ask it. So take whatever answers you see with a grain of salt. It's not 100% ready yet IMHO.

Thanks again for the responses. I once upon a time thought computers were just a fad that would go away at some point. I'll hold out the same hopes for this enigmatic (to me) "thing".

Historically, software was like a recipe: the developer wrote explicit instructions for every specific situation. A "bug" happened when a situation cropped up that the developer hadn't written a rule for, or just made a mistake.

AI is different. It’s not "programmed" with rules; it’s trained on data. Think of it like a brain using fuzzy reasoning. It’s shown millions of examples (training data) and told when its reaction is good or bad. Over time, it gets better at mimicking reason and understanding patterns.

For example, last night I showed Gemini (Google’s AI) photos of my beaver snare sets. It didn't have a "rulebook" for snares; instead, it "understood" the geometry and the environment based on all the trapping information it has processed. It could actually critique my sets and even change its mind when I gave it more context about the bank or the water flow.

(BTW I've been a software developer for 25 years)