1 Understanding generative AI basics

 

This chapter covers

  • Introducing generative AI: What’s really going on under the hood?
  • Distinguishing between the many generative AI models
  • Reviewing the global trends that brought about the generative AI revolution

Welcome! As advertised, this book is obsolete, which means that by the time you get around to opening it, most of what’s written here will either not work or will be so outdated as to be useless. Now I bet you’re feeling just a bit silly for sinking good money into a product like this. Well, I assure you: you don’t feel half as weird for buying this book as I felt writing it.

We will definitely get around to the fun stuff—or at least stuff that was fun back in the Before Times when I was originally writing this— soon enough. We’ll learn how generative artificial intelligence can be used for far more than just stand-alone ChatGPT prompts. Hopefully, you are curious to learn the answers to the following questions:

  • Can AI read statistical data archives and derive serious insights?
  • Can AI access the live internet, aggregate data from multiple sites, and use that to pick out real-world trends?
  • Can AI accurately summarize large bodies of your own text-based content?
  • Can AI models be fine-tuned to provide responses that better match your needs?
  • Can AI models be used to generate original video and audio content?

Believe me, I’m also curious. Let’s find out.

Stepping into the generative AI world

Categorizing AI models by function and objective

Understanding usage tokens

GPT-4 models

GPT-3.5 models

GPT-3 models

Model fine-tuning

The technologies that make generative AI work

AI and data privacy and ownership

AI and reliability

What’s still ahead?

Summary

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