There are a variety of different types of Artificial Intelligence (AI) system, but at the most basic an AI converts a set of inputs to a set of outputs.

To build an AI, the first thing you need to do is begin with your question. What are you trying to achieve? This tells you what the output of your AI needs to be.

For instance, you might want an AI that tells you if the water in a coffee cup is too hot.

Now that we know the question, we can come up with the outputs we need.

In this case, our output is simple - we simply want digital signal. We're just looking for a single output that we will call Too Hot. It should indicate if the coffee is too hot to serve.

Now we need to define our inputs. This is the information that the AI can use to calculate the outputs.

In this example case, our input is the temperature we're measuring in our cup.

Drawing our AI, we end up with the picture below…

In the above image, we have our temperature as an input to the AI, and the too hot status as the output of the AI.

It's the job of the actual AI to convert the set of inputs you've chosen to the set of outputs you've made.

For example, these are the two output patterns we're looking for…

Next - Weak vs Strong AIs.