The company had previously announced its ChatGPT integration plan at CES in January. At the time, it wasn’t clear how it all would work. VW says that OpenAI’s chatbot, along with a “multitude” of other models are provided by automotive chatbot company Cerence, will take over for IDA when requests are more complex than tweaking your air conditioning settings. For instance, the company says requests for things like restaurant suggestions or to be told a story will go to the cloud.
IDA can locally process natural language requests for certain things, VW claims. Tell it you’re “chilly,” and it should know you mean you want the heat on. (Here’s hoping it doesn’t sometimes kick that over to ChatGPT to tell you about nearby chili restaurants.)
As more companies try to sell AI as the next big thing, the ways they use the term and other related nomenclature might get even more confusing. There are a bunch of phrases you are likely to come across in articles or marketing about AI, so to help you better understand them, I’ve put together an overview of many of the key terms in artificial intelligence that are currently being bandied about. Ultimately, however, it all boils down to trying to make computers smarter.
(Note that I’m only giving a rudimentary overview of many of these terms. Many of them can often get very scientific, but this article should hopefully give you a grasp of the basics.)
Machine learning: Machine learning systems are trained (we’ll explain more about what training is later) on data so they can make predictions about new information. That way, they can “learn.” Machine learning is a field within artificial intelligence and is critical to many AI technologies.
Artificial general intelligence (AGI): Artificial intelligence that’s as smart or smarter than a human. (OpenAI in particular is investing heavily into AGI.) This could be incredibly powerful technology, but for a lot of people, it’s also potentially the most frightening prospect about the possibilities of AI — think of all the movies we’ve seen about superintelligent machines taking over the world! If that isn’t enough, there is also work being done on “superintelligence,” or AI that’s much smarter than a human.
Generative AI: An AI technology capable of generating new text, images, code, and more. Think of all the interesting (if occasionally problematic) answers and images that you’ve seen being produced by ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini. Generative AI tools are powered by AI models that are typically trained on vast amounts of data.
