AI is a lot like an orange
“What is AI?” is such a loaded question at the moment and you get a different answer (or none at all) from every person you ask. Well, I’m here to provide yet another and I reckon mine is pretty good (but probably not original).
Per the Simpsons meme above where Homer originally likened marriage to an orange, I think AI has a similar analogy. An orange is made up of its skin and the juicy segments in the middle and without the skin, there’s nothing holding those segments together. I would say the orange, as a whole thing, is AI and the segments within are the various techniques and sub-disciplines that make it up. The skin is the front-facing side that we all see and hear about in the media (and, like AI, I’m sure certain people would argue which orange is the best, which tastes bad, and why oranges are good or bad for you).
Here are some examples of AI subtopics:
- Machine learning (arguably the most important and often used interchangeably with “AI” which I would personally disagree with)
- Deep learning
- Reinforcement learning
- Q-learning
- Supervised learning
- Unsupervised learning
- Natural language processing
- Topic modelling
- Sentiment analysis
- Entity extraction
- Classification
- Summarisation
- Fuzzy matching
- Neural networks
- Computer vision
- Robotics
- Speech processing
Feel free to let me know if any of those need rearranging but they all make up what AI is.
As for computer science, those would be… orange tree grove I guess? The jury’s still out on that one.