✏️ Machine Learning 101: Why It’s a Game-Changer

Today, we're diving into the world of machine learning—what it is, why it matters, and how it’s shaping everything from Netflix recommendations to self-driving cars. Plus, we’ll show you how to supercharge your presentations with AI, and why even OpenAI might be feeling a little cash-strapped. Let’s get into it!

What to Expect:

• What is Machine Learning?

• How to: Create Presentations with AI

• OpenAI Low on Cash

• Get a Personalized Meal Plan Based on Your Diet

• More AI Tech, Tools, and Talks

CONCEPT CORNER
What Is Machine Learning?

Machine learning (ML) is one of the AI buzzwords you’ve probably heard a million times, but what exactly is it? ML is the engine that powers AI—it’s the part that teaches computers to learn from data and make smart decisions on their own.

The easiest way to explain the difference between artificial intelligence and machine learning is by saying, ‘All ML is AI, but not all AI is ML.’ (As you can see below👇 )

🤓 What it is: ML is a subset of AI that focuses on teaching computers to learn from data. Instead of programming a computer with specific instructions for every task, ML uses algorithms to analyze data, learn patterns, and make decisions on its own.

🛠️ How it works:

• Step 1 - Collect Data: It all starts with data—think images, text, numbers, you name it. This data is used to train the ML model and help it to become smart.

• Step 2 - Choose Algorithm: The algorithm is the set of rules that the computer follows to learn. Different algorithms work for different tasks, so it is important to choose one that fits your use case. Some might be better at finding patterns while others are better at making predictions.

• Step 3 - Train the Model: The data is fed into the algorithm, which analyzes it to learn patterns and relationships. The model processes the data, adjusts its parameters (aka settings), and tries to get better with each round of training. It will continue to improve itself until it can accurately recognize or predict the data.

• Step 4 - Test and Tune: Once trained, you need a way to evaluate if the model does what you wanted it to do. The model is given new, unseen data to evaluate how well it has learned. If it makes mistakes, it goes back for fine-tuning until it gets better.

🤖 Practical Applications:

• Personalized Recommendations - Netflix, Spotify, and Amazon all use ML to suggest what you should watch, listen to, or buy next based on learning from your past behaviors and preferences.

• Self-Driving Cars - ML uses pattern recognition to help cars recognize road signs, pedestrians, and other vehicles.

• Healthcare - ML models analyze medical data to assist doctors in diagnosing diseases, predicting the likelihood of certain diseases, and suggesting personalized treatment plans.

• Finance - Banks use ML to detect fraud, predict stock prices, and forecast financial trends.

❗️ Why does it matter to you: ML is what makes AI smart. Understanding ML is your gateway to grasping how AI is able to adapt, improve, and handle complex tasks that would be impossible to do manually. And you deal with it everyday - it’s the reason your phone can recognize your face, your emails can filter spam, and why Netflix knows your movie taste better than you do.

HOW TO: HACKS
How To Build a Presentation With AI

Presentations are common in most jobs, and we know how time-consuming or stressful they can be, especially when you are lacking creativity. But, with AI-powered tools, you can design, write, and polish your slides in record time. Today we will focus on free tools, and next week we will dive deeper in to more advanced, paid AI integrations.

• Step 1: Outline Presentation - Start by asking ChatGPT to generate an outline for your presentation. For example, type, “I am a [INSERT YOUR ROLE] Create a powerpoint outline on [INSERT YOUR TOPIC] for [YOUR AUDIENCE].”

• Step 2: Generate Slide Content - Use ChatGPT to draft text for each slide. Ask it to generate bullet points, talking points, or summaries based on your outline. It’ll give you concise points that you can copy directly into your presentation. A potential prompt to use:

Expand on each of the subtopics you provided earlier using bullet points. You can consider elaborating on the key ideas, offering supporting examples and explaining any details that you think would enhance the audience's understanding on the topic. 

• Step 3: Design Your Slides - Once you have your content, head to Google Slides or PowerPoint to input your text. Use their free design suggestions—like PowerPoint’s Designer or Google’s templates —to automatically enhance your slides with visually appealing layouts and color schemes.

  • Pro Tip: If you’re looking for a more professional-looking presentation, try using Canva which has many visually appealing templates which you can use to copy and paste your content in to (has a free version). Check out the video below for how to use Canva templates:

🚨 If you found this helpful, check back next week where we will cover how to make more complex, engaging presentations using more advanced AI tools.

AI NEWS
Is OpenAI Low On Cash?

OpenAI is in discussions to raise additional funding that could value the company at over $100 billion, marking a significant increase from its $86 billion earlier this year and the $27 billion one in early 2023. Microsoft invested $10 billion in 2023, and they are looking to join this round again, along with potential investments from Apple and NVIDIA. Let's take a look at the operating costs to understand why $10 billion doesn't make you as rich as one would think…

• 💸 Daily Operations: It takes a whopping $700k daily to keep ChatGPT up and running, primarily due to the computing power required for millions of interactions.

• ☁️ Cloud Infrastructure: OpenAI spends approximately $4 billion annually on Microsoft Azure's cloud services, even with discounted rates. This cost is due to the massive computational needs of running AI models like GPT-4.

• 🤖 Model Training: The company spends around $3 billion on model training yearly, for its advanced models. That money mostly covers the computational resources & the data handling needs.

• 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Staffing Costs: Hiring top talent, especially in a hot space like AI, is expensive. OpenAI's lineup includes top AI researchers and engineers but with that, comes a large bill. For their 1500 employees, OpenAI has to pay $1.5 billion annually, three times higher than initial projections.

• ⚙️ Server Hardware: Having 350k servers is expensive - especially when those are primarily using NVIDIA GPUs (like A100), which are needed for efficient AI interactions. A big portion of those serves are devoted on inference, the process where AI models analyze input data (like user questions) and generate responses based on their training.

• 🤝 Regulatory & Compliance: OpenAI faces high costs associated with compliance and potential regulatory scrutiny. More specifically, areas like data privacy, intellectual property, and ethical AI use, could lead to future financial or legal penalties.

🤓 Why it matters: Given their hefty expenses, OpenAI’s latest funding talks are less about chasing new opportunities and more about trying to keep up with their ambitious vision. If they don’t secure more funding, they risk scaling back their operations, slowing down innovation, or even facing financial instability (losses are projected to be a potential $5B this year). This situation highlights the financial challenges even leading AI companies face in balancing growth with sustainability.

PROMPT OF THE WEEK
For: Healthy Eaters

Create a detailed meal plan for a [DURATION e.g. week, day] that aligns with a balanced diet, tailored for someone who is a [GENDER], aged [AGE], living in [LOCATION], with [DIETARY RESTRICTIONS e.g. no restrictions, vegetarian]. If specified, adjust the meal plan to support [GOAL] (e.g. maintaining weight). Include:

A daily menu with breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks.
Recipes for each meal with ingredients and step-by-step cooking instructions.
A comprehensive grocery list with quantities of each ingredient.
Tips for meal prepping and storage to simplify the week.

TECH TOOLS, TIPS, AND TALKS

📖 What we’re reading: The Lean Startup - How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses
📻 What we’re listening to: The Diary of A CEO - Ex-Google Officer Speaks Out About Dangers of AI
💻 What we’re using: Canva - A free-to-use online graphic design tool with AI-powered features such as image creation, voiceovers, and editing enhancements.

MORE READING

• UK’s First Teacherless AI Classroom - Will this be the future?

• AI Hit By Copyright Claims - No more data to train on?

• US AI Safety Institute to Test New AI Models - Learn about the first step towards safe & ethical AI, even in the for-profit AI industry.

We want to empower our readers with actually insightful knowledge so that they are more confident, informed leaders. Because let's face it, AI could be running the world pretty soon... so shouldn't we at least know how it works? If you are curious about a topic and want to learn more, drop us a message below👇🏼