How AI learns

AI does not know things the way you do. It learns from examples.

Say we want an AI to spot cats. People show it thousands of cat photos. The AI looks for a pattern (show definition). Pointy ears. Whiskers. A long tail.

Later it sees a new photo. It checks for those patterns. Then it guesses: cat or not a cat.

All those examples have a name. They are called training data (show definition).

Not every clever machine is AI. A calculator follows rules. It does not learn. A robot (show definition) is a machine that moves. Some robots use AI. Many do not.