AI Does Not Really 'Learn', and Knowing Why Will Help You Use It More Responsibly

There are two main differences in how humans and AI systems learn.

- Kai Riemer and Sandra Peter

What if we told you that artificial intelligence (AI) systems such as ChatGPT don't actually learn? Many people we talk to are genuinely surprised to hear this. Even AI systems themselves will often tell you confidently that they are learning systems. Many reports and even academic papers say the same. But this is due to a misconception – or rather a loose understanding of what we mean by "learning" in AI.

Yet, understanding more precisely how and when AI systems learn (and when they don't) will make you a more productive and more responsible user of AI.

AI DOES NOT LEARN – AT LEAST NOT LIKE HUMANS DO

Many misconceptions around AI stem from using words that have a certain meaning when applied to humans, such as "learning." We know how humans learn, because we do it all the time. We have experiences; we do something that fails; we encounter something new; we read something surprising; and thus we remember, we update or change the way we do things.

This is not how AI systems learn. There are two main differences.

First, AI systems do not learn from any specific experiences, which would allow them to understand things the way we humans do. Rather, they learn by encoding patterns from vast amounts of data – using mathematics alone. This happens during the training process, when they are built.