AI, explained simply — history to agentic AI.
No hype, no jargon walls. What AI actually is, where it came from, and the words everyone throws around — models, LLMs, generative AI, agents — in plain English.
What's covered
- What is Artificial Intelligence?
- From a question in 1950 to AI that acts
- Narrow, general, super
- AI, ML, deep learning and GenAI — boxes inside boxes
- AI that creates
- AI agents and agentic AI
What you will understand after reading this
- The difference between AI, machine learning, deep learning and generative AI
- What a large language model (LLM) actually is and how it produces text
- What an AI agent is and how it differs from a chatbot
- Why narrow AI is everywhere but artificial general intelligence does not exist yet
- How to evaluate an AI tool claim without being misled by marketing
Frequently asked questions
- What is a large language model (LLM)?
- A large language model is a type of AI trained on vast amounts of text. It learns statistical patterns in language — which words follow which — and uses those patterns to generate, summarise, translate and answer questions. GPT-4, Claude and Gemini are all LLMs. They do not understand language the way people do; they predict the most likely next token given what came before.
- What is an AI agent?
- An AI agent is a system that uses an LLM to plan and take actions, not just respond. Given a goal, it breaks the goal into steps, calls tools (a search engine, a database, an API, a browser), acts on the results, and repeats until the task is done. A chatbot replies; an agent acts. Most practical AI agents today use Claude, GPT-4 or Gemini as their reasoning core.
- Can I build AI tools without a computer science degree?
- Yes. Modern AI APIs (Claude, OpenAI, Gemini) are designed to be called from any programming language with a few lines of code. No-code tools like n8n and Make.com let non-developers wire AI into workflows. The hard part today is designing the right prompt and knowing when AI is and is not the right tool — not the mathematics behind it.
Akshay Mahajan — full-stack & AI web developer, Surat, Gujarat, India. akshaymad0608@gmail.com · +91 76008 85080