Hi everyone,
Welcome back to Field Notes, this weeks edition on AI !!
Artificial Intelligence is everywhere.
It's writing emails, generating images, answering questions and making headlines almost every day. Depending on who you ask, it's either the greatest technological breakthrough of our generation—or the beginning of the end.
The reality, as usual, is somewhere in the middle.
This edition of Field Notes is all about understanding it. We'll unpack what today's AI actually is, where it excels, where it falls short, and why it's already changing everything from healthcare to scientific research.
Because whether you're using AI every day or avoiding it altogether, a little AI literacy is quickly becoming as important as digital literacy once was.
AI FUNDAMENTALS WHAT ACTUALLY IS AI?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the ability for computers to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence. Instead of following fixed instructions, modern AI learns patterns from huge amounts of data, allowing it to recognise images, understand language, generate content, and make predictions.
Despite how futuristic it sounds, AI isn't a single technology- it's an umbrella term for a wide range of systems designed to perform intelligent tasks.
Some AI can recognise faces in photos, recommend what to watch next on Netflix, or predict traffic on Google Maps. Others, like ChatGPT, can understand and generate human language. This is a Large Language Model (LLM)
Newly, there are also Visual Language Models (VLMs). Think of them as Large Language Models with eyes- they can "see" images, diagrams and documents, then answer questions or perform tasks using both visual and written information.
In fact, you've probably been using AI for years without realising it...
Face ID, Spotify recommendations, Gmail's spam filter, faster routes on Google Maps - AI is working behind the scenes in all of them.
The biggest recent shift has been generative AI - AI that doesn't just analyse information but creates it: writing emails, generating images, summarising documents, brainstorming ideas, writing code, and even helping design new medicines.
But today's AI isn't intelligent the way humans are - it has no consciousness, emotions, or understanding of the world. It simply learns patterns from data and uses them to predict useful outputs.
That's what makes modern AI both incredibly powerful - and why understanding how it works is becoming an increasingly valuable skill.
💡 DID YOU KNOW?
The first AI conference happened in 1956.
AI is nearly 70 years old—ChatGPT just made it mainstream.
AI LITERACY STAY SAFE LEARNING WITH AI
As AI becomes part of our everyday lives, understanding how it works- and where it can go wrong is becoming an essential digital skill. AI literacy isn't about learning to code; it's about knowing how to use AI effectively, safely, and critically.
How AI actually works
One of the biggest misconceptions about AI is that it "knows" things. It doesn't.
Unlike a search engine, AI doesn't have a database of facts to look up. Instead, it generates responses by predicting the most likely next piece of text, based on patterns learned during training (unless it's using search or another retrieval tool).
Think of it like an incredibly sophisticated autocomplete. Rather than predicting the next word in your sentence, it's predicting the next idea, explanation, email or conversation.
Most of the time those predictions are remarkably accurate, which is why AI can feel so knowledgeable. But since it's predicting what's likely rather than what's true, it can sound convincing while being completely wrong.
These mistakes are known as hallucinations.
AI has a working memory... but it's limited
Another useful concept to understand is context.
Everything you type into a conversation becomes part of the AI's working memory (called its context window). The more information you add, the more the AI has to keep track of.
Eventually, earlier parts of the conversation fade - instructions get forgotten, details get muddled, and responses become less consistent. This is often called context rot.
This doesn't necessarily mean the AI is getting "worse." It's simply reaching the practical limits of how much information it can actively juggle at once.
Quick Tip... If you've been on a project for a while, it's worth starting a fresh chat with a concise summary. I ask Chat/Claude to create an "AI-readable" summary to paste into a new chat, so I get a clean slate without losing context.
When using AI, this rule rarely lets you down
The more AI has to create, the more you should verify.
The more AI has to transform, the more you can trust the output.
For example, summarising a document you've uploaded is generally reliable. Inventing statistics or recalling an obscure fact from memory? That's worth double-checking.
📚 Recommended Resource: Anthropic Academy
One of the best free resources for learning AI. It covers how modern AI works, how to use it effectively, and its limitations—all in short, beginner-friendly lessons.
Check it out here Open link ↗
AI IN PERSPECTIVE THE CONVERSATIONS SHAPING AI TODAY
Like any transformative technology, AI brings enormous opportunities alongside genuine challenges. Understanding these isn't about fearing AI—it's about using it thoughtfully and recognising the broader impact it can have on society, creativity, and the environment.
AI isn't just changing technology; it's changing the systems we rely on every day.
Learning
Easy access to AI can make learning faster- but it can also encourage people to outsource thinking. Educators are increasingly concerned about declining critical thinking, writing and problem-solving skills when AI replaces, rather than supports, learning.
Creativity
Artists, musicians and writers argue that AI companies have trained models on copyrighted work without permission, raising questions about ownership, consent and the future of creative careers.
Sustainability
Modern AI requires enormous data centres that consume significant amounts of electricity and water. As AI adoption accelerates, so does the challenge of making it more sustainable.
Misinformation
Deepfakes and AI-generated content are becoming increasingly convincing, making scams easier to run and trustworthy information harder to identify.
Employment
AI isn't expected to replace every job- but it is likely to automate many routine tasks, forcing workers to adapt and learn new skills throughout their careers.
These topics deserve more than just a few sentences, and I encourage you to explore these real world impacts yourselves. Here are some of my favourite resources:
The Daily Aus Open link ↗ - AI news explained in plain English
OECD.AI Open link ↗ – AI policy, education and society -
MIT Technology Review Open link ↗ – AI news and explainers -
MIT News Open link ↗ – Research made readable -
eSafety Commissioner Open link ↗ – Deepfakes, scams and online safety
💾 AI IS MORE THAN SOFTWARE
AI doesn't just need smarter software; it needs huge amounts of computer hardware. As companies race to build AI data centres, demand for memory and storage has skyrocketed. Analysts predict the cost of the memory chips used in SSDs could rise by more than 200% during 2026, putting upward pressure on the price of computers and storage devices.
BALANCING THE SCALE MORE THAN CHATBOTS
AI is often discussed through the lens of risk; but it's also becoming one of the most powerful tools humans have ever built for science, medicine and discovery.
It's easy to think of AI as just another productivity tool- something that writes emails or answers questions. But behind the scenes, it's already helping scientists solve problems that have challenged humanity for decades.
Earlier this year, an OpenAI reasoning model helped solve an 80-year-old math problem Open link ↗ first proposed by Paul Erdős Open link ↗, later independently verified as correct. It was a glimpse of something bigger: AI isn't just automating work - it can expand the frontiers of human knowledge.
And that's just one example...
Accelerating medicine: AlphaFold Open link ↗ predicted the 3D structures of more than 200 million proteins, giving scientists an unprecedented resource for understanding disease and developing new medicines. -
Detecting disease earlier: AI systems are helping radiologists Open link ↗ identify certain cancers by spotting subtle patterns in medical scans that can be difficult for the human eye to detect. -
Tackling climate challenges: Researchers are using AI Open link ↗ to improve weather forecasting, model climate systems, optimise renewable energy grids and reduce energy waste. -
Improving accessibility: Live captions, instant translation, voice generation and image descriptions are making technology more accessible for millions of people with hearing, vision and speech impairments.
Using AI well means using it thoughtfully...
Think before asking AI. -
Use it to strengthen your thinking, not replace it. -
Verify important facts. -
Never paste confidential information into public AI tools.
Remember that large AI models require significant computing power, so use them intentionally rather than unnecessarily.
The goal isn't to avoid AI. It's to use it in ways that make us more capable, more creative and more informed, not less.
THE FUTURE OF AI AI ≠ AGI
Despite what headlines sometimes suggest, today's AI is not the all-knowing, human-like intelligence that science fiction has imagined for decades.
Today's AI is incredibly impressive but surprisingly narrow. Every one of its thousands of tasks comes back to recognising patterns and generating outputs from learned data.
AGI Open link ↗ (Artificial General Intelligence) is the name for a hypothetical system that could learn almost anything a human can - teaching itself new skills, adapting to unfamiliar situations, and applying knowledge across completely different fields.
That's a huge leap...
No one knows exactly when—or even if—we'll get there. While AI continues to improve at an extraordinary pace, there is still no agreement among experts that AGI exists today.
ASI Open link ↗ (Artificial Super Intelligence) is another hypothetical form of AI that would surpass human intelligence in virtually every domain; not just science or mathematics, but creativity, reasoning and decision-making. It remains entirely theoretical and does not exist today.
Today's AI is powerful, but it's not AGI; and it's certainly not ASI. Understanding the difference helps separate what's possible today from what's still the subject of research and speculation.
And that’s all for now!
This week's edition was a bit text heavy, but I hope you were able to learn something new and are able to feel a bit more confident + concious about using AI.
If you found any of this useful, let me know and I’ll keep sharing things like this in future editions. If you have any questions about anything mentioned above, or need a hand getting set up, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
I’d also love to hear any ideas, feedback, frustrations, or tech rabbit holes you’d like me to explore next.
Your weekly dose of wholesomeness can be found here!!!!!!!!! Open link ↗
See something new I learnt about this week here!!!!! Open link ↗
And as always, if there’s anything I might be able to do to make your day a little easier, my door (and inbox) is always open.
Over & Out,
Bethy 🎀