Core AI Concepts – Part 1

Join hosts Lois Houston and Nikita Abraham, along with Principal AI/ML Instructor Himanshu Raj, as they dive deeper into the world of artificial intelligence, analyzing the types of machine learning. They also discuss deep learning, including how it works, its applications, and its advantages and challenges. From chatbot assistants to speech-to-text systems and image recognition, they explore how deep learning is powering the tools we use today. AI for You: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ou/course/ai-for-you/152601/252500 Oracle University Learning Community: https://education.oracle.com/ou-community LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/oracle-university/ X: https://x.com/Oracle_Edu Special thanks to Arijit Ghosh, David Wright, Kris-Ann Nansen, Radhika Banka, and the OU Studio Team for helping us create this episode. ------------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00:00 Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast, the first stop on your cloud journey. During this series of informative podcasts, we’ll bring you foundational training on the most popular Oracle technologies. Let’s get started! 00:25 Lois: Hello and welcome to the Oracle University Podcast. I’m Lois Houston, Director of Innovation Programs with Oracle University, and with me is Nikita Abraham, Team Lead: Editorial Services. Nikita: Hi everyone! Last week, we went through the basics of artificial intelligence. If you missed it, I really recommend listening to that episode before you start this one. Today, we’re going to explore some foundational AI concepts, starting with machine learning. After that, we’ll discuss the two main machine learning models: supervised learning and unsupervised learning. And we’ll close with deep learning. Lois: Himanshu Raj, our Principal AI/ML Instructor, joins us for today’s episode. Hi Himanshu! Let’s dive right in. What is machine learning? 01:12 Himanshu: Machine learning lets computers learn from examples to make decisions or predictions without being told exactly what to do. They help computers learn from past data and examples so they can spot patterns and make smart decisions just like humans do, but faster and at scale. 01:31 Nikita: Can you give us a simple analogy so we can understand this better? Himanshu: When you train a dog to sit or fetch, you don't explain the logic behind the command. Instead, you give this dog examples and reinforce correct behavior with rewards, which could be a treat, a pat, or a praise. Over time, the dog learns to associate the command with the action and reward. Machine learning learns in a similar way, but with data instead of dog treats. We feed a mathematical system called models with multiple examples of input and the desired output, and it learns the pattern. It's trial and error, learning from the experience. Here is another example. Recognizing faces. Humans are incredibly good at this, even as babies. We don't need someone to explain every detail of the face. We just see many faces over time and learn the patterns. Machine learning models can be trained the same way. We showed them thousands or millions of face images, each labeled, and they start to detect patterns like eyes, nose, mouth, spacing, different angles. So eventually, they can recognize faces they have seen before or even match new ones that are similar. So machine learning doesn't have any rules, it's just learning from examples. This is the kind of learning behind things like face ID on your smartphone, security systems that recognizes employees, or even Facebook tagging people in your photos. 03:05 Lois: So, what you’re saying is, in machine learning, instead of telling the computer exactly what to do in every situation, you feed the model with data and give it examples of inputs and the correct outputs. Over time, the model figures out patterns and relationships within the data on its own, and it can make the smart guess when it sees something new. I got it! Now let’s move on to how machine learning actually works? Can you take us through the process step by step? Himanshu: Machine learning actually happens in three steps. First, we have the input, which is the training data. Think of this as showing the model a series of examples. It could be images of historical sales data or customer complaints, whatever we want the machine to learn from. Next comes the pattern finding. This is the brain of the system where the model starts spotting relationships in the data. It figures out things like customer who churn or leave usually contacts support twice in the same month. It's not given rules, it just learns patterns based on the example. And finally, we have output, which is the prediction or decision. This is the result of all this learning. Once trained, the computer or model can say this customer is likely to churn or leave. It's like having a smart assistant that makes fast, data-driven guesses without needing step by step...