How do I explain AI to a non-technical person?
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How do I explain AI to a non-technical person?
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Mahesh ChandPosted Sep 9, 2025, 9:44 PM
It depends on the person's background and then relates to that. When speaking with a marketer, focus on discussing user cases related to automated workflows and decision-making. AI is also a very vast area. You need to be specific about which branch of AI you're referring to. Today, in the name of AI, GenAI is all over, which is not really AI but content generation from past content.
Sam HobbsPosted Sep 9, 2025, 8:10 PM
I think that we should first explain that people are using the term AI too much. They tend to automatically say that anything done by computer is AI.
Then explain that AI is actually many things.
One thing is natural language, the ability for the computer to understand language intended for people. People tend to use the term LLM for natural language; you can research that if you want to.
Another type of AI is expert systems. They are not real easy to explain. An expert system includes a database of knowledge, a knowledgebase, and something that processes that knowledgebase. A knowledgebase is a database of decisions; as a programmer, they are a bunch of if statements in a database that can be processed.
There are other kinds of AI; pattern recognition is one.