Understanding AI

Artificial Intelligence (AI) refers to computer systems designed to perform tasks that typically require human intelligence—understanding language, recognizing patterns, making decisions, and generating content. When you chat with ChatGPT or ask Claude to explain a concept, you're interacting with AI.

Modern AI tools use machine learning, which means they learn patterns from data rather than following pre-programmed rules. The AI you use for academic work has been trained on enormous amounts of text, learning the patterns of human language, knowledge, and reasoning.

Understanding how AI works helps you use it more effectively—and recognize its limitations. AI is a powerful tool, but it's not magic, and knowing what happens "under the hood" will make you a more skilled user.

Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT work by predicting the next word in a sequence. They've been trained on so much text that they can generate remarkably coherent and helpful responses—but understanding this prediction mechanism reveals both their power and limitations.

The Training Process

LLMs are trained on billions of words from books, websites, articles, and other text sources. During training, the model learns patterns: which words tend to follow others, how sentences are structured, what information is associated with different topics, and even how to reason through problems.

From Input to Output

When you send a prompt to an AI:

1. Your text is broken into tokens (word pieces)
2. The model processes these tokens through billions of parameters
3. It predicts the most likely next tokens based on patterns learned during training
4. This process repeats, generating text word by word

This is why AI can produce fluent text but might get facts wrong—it's optimized to produce likely text, not true text. The patterns it learned might include accurate information, outdated information, or even misconceptions present in its training data.

Understanding these core concepts will help you use AI tools more effectively and communicate about AI with instructors and peers.

AI tools and search engines serve different purposes, and understanding the difference helps you choose the right tool for each task.

For academic work, you'll often use both: AI to help you understand concepts and draft ideas, and search engines (or databases) to find and verify sources. Smart integration of both tools accelerates your research while maintaining accuracy.