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Before you start: what AI is, in 5 minutes

See five words you'll hear everywhere in one picture, so the lessons make sense.

You hear "AI", "machine learning", "language model", "AI tool" and "agent". People mix them up, so tips get hard to follow. You can't tell if a claim applies to the AI tool you use.

Example: made up to show the idea.

You have rough notes for your residents' group. They say: jumble sale, Saturday 10 to 12, community centre hall. You need two till helpers. You paste them into your AI tool and ask for a friendly message. Each section below follows these notes.

Why "AI" seems to mean five different things

Three of the words sit inside each other, like boxes. The other two are built around the smallest box.

• AI is the widest word. It's software that works out an output from the input it gets. That output can be a prediction, a suggestion, content or a decision. Spotting faces in photos and turning speech into text are AI too.
• Machine learning is one way to build AI. Instead of step-by-step rules, it learns patterns from many examples. That learning is called training.
• A language model is built with machine learning from large amounts of text. That's why it can work with words.
• An AI tool is the app you type into. A language model sits inside. Around it are the chat box, settings, and sometimes search or your files.
• An agent is an AI tool that takes steps toward a goal, not just replies.

Your notes went into an AI tool. The language model inside it wrote the draft.

In one line: your AI tool is an app built around a language model.

What your AI tool isn't

• Not a search engine, unless it searches. Without search, it works from training, which stops at a date. Lesson 1 shows how to tell if it searched.
• Not a store of saved answers. OpenAI's help page says its models "do not store or retain copies" of training data. It writes a new reply each time.
• Not someone who knows you. It sees what you give it in the chat. Some AI tools can also remember details from past chats. Look in the settings to see if you can review or turn this off.
• Not a person. It's software, however friendly it sounds.

So if the draft adds a detail you didn't give, check it.

In one line: it works from training and what you give it, plus search or memory if on.

When an AI tool stops replying and starts doing

So far, your AI tool replied once and you did the rest. An agent takes several steps toward a goal. On the way, it can use search, your files or a browser.

Say you ask it to do three things. Check the hall's hours online, fix the message, and draft a Friday reminder. Each step can touch something real. So you decide what it may do, and check what it did. Lesson 8 helps you decide what to hand over.

In one line: an agent takes steps for you, so you set limits and check results.

Quick sort: which word fits best?

Pick one, then open the answer.

1. The app on your phone where you paste your notes.

• A · Language model
• B · AI tool
• C · Machine learning

2. The part trained on large amounts of text, which writes your message.

• A · Machine learning
• B · AI tool
• C · Language model

3. It checks the hall's hours online, updates your message and drafts a reminder.

• A · Agent
• B · Language model
• C · AI