AI: Math, Not Magic

This article demystifies artificial intelligence, revealing it's not magic but sophisticated mathematics. AI systems learn patterns from vast datasets to make predictions and decisions, similar to phone autocomplete but far more advanced. The article explains how AI works, using examples like ChatGPT predicting the next word and Midjourney mathematically refining noise into images matching prompts. It also highlights AI's limitations, including hallucinations (generating false information), lack of common sense, and biases. The article explores why AI keeps improving: more and better data, increased computing power, better algorithms and models, and greater integration and specialization. Despite advancements, AI remains fundamentally pattern recognition based on math, not sentient intelligence.