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Artificial Intelligence 101

The AI Family Tree

November 1, 2024

Are LLMs AI superior to NLP AI?

LLM (Large Language Models) and NLP (Natural Language Processing) are related but not directly comparable as they serve different roles and functions in the field of artificial intelligence. Here's a breakdown of their relationship:

1. NLP (Natural Language Processing): This is a broader field that encompasses various techniques for teaching machines to understand, interpret, and generate human language. NLP includes tasks such as tokenization, part-of-speech tagging, parsing, named entity recognition, sentiment analysis, and more.

2. LLM (Large Language Models): These are a specific type of model used within the field of NLP. LLMs are trained on vast amounts of text data to predict the next word in a sentence. They have shown remarkable abilities in understanding context, generating human-like text, and even performing tasks they weren't explicitly trained for (like translation, summarization, or question answering), given the right prompts.

So, LLMs are not superior to NLP; rather, they are a powerful tool within the NLP toolbox. They excel at many tasks, but they don't replace all other NLP techniques. For instance, for tasks that require structured outputs (like named entity recognition or parsing), traditional NLP methods might be more effective.

In summary, LLMs are a significant advancement in the field of NLP, but they don't replace NLP. Instead, they augment and complement the existing NLP techniques.

If I well understood, LLMs are a sub-category of NLP, and NLP is a sub-category of ML (Machine Learning)?

Yes, you've understood the hierarchy correctly! Here's a simple breakdown:

1. Machine Learning (ML): This is the broadest category. It refers to the use of algorithms and statistical models to enable computers to perform tasks without explicit instructions, relying on patterns and inference instead.

2. Natural Language Processing (NLP): NLP is a subfield of machine learning (and also artificial intelligence in general). It focuses specifically on the interaction between computers and human language, aiming to teach machines to understand, interpret, and generate human language.

3. Large Language Models (LLMs): LLMs are a specific approach within the field of NLP. They are a type of model trained on large amounts of text data to understand and generate human language. LLMs are typically built using deep learning techniques, which is another subfield of machine learning.

So, the hierarchy is as follows:

- Machine Learning (ML)

- Natural Language Processing (NLP)

- Large Language Models (LLMs)

Each level is a more specibranchesalized subset of the level above it. This hierarchy reflects the increasing specialization and focus on specific types of data (in this case, human language) and tasks.

Can you list all the immediate branches of Machine Learning as NLP?

Certainly! Machine Learning (ML) is a broad field with many subfields and branches. Here are some of the key immediate branches of Machine Learning, similar to how Natural Language Processing (NLP) is a specialized branch:

  1. Supervised Learning: This involves training models on labeled data, where the desired output is known. Examples include classification and regression tasks.
  2. Unsupervised Learning: This involves training models on unlabeled data, where the goal is to find hidden patterns or structures in the data. Examples include clustering and dimensionality reduction.
  3. Semi-Supervised Learning: This combines a small amount of labeled data with a large amount of unlabeled data. It is useful when obtaining labeled data is expensive or time-consuming.
  4. Reinforcement Learning: This involves training agents to make a sequence of decisions by interacting with an environment to maximize a reward signal. Examples include game playing and robotics.
  5. Deep Learning: This is a subset of machine learning that uses artificial neural networks with many layers to model complex patterns in data. Examples include convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for image processing and recurrent neural networks (RNNs) for sequential data.
  6. Natural Language Processing (NLP): As mentioned, this focuses on the interaction between computers and human language, aiming to teach machines to understand, interpret, and generate human language.
  7. Computer Vision: This focuses on enabling computers to interpret and understand visual data from the world, such as images and videos. Examples include object detection, image classification, and facial recognition.
  8. Transfer Learning: This involves using pre-trained models on one task and applying them to a different but related task. It is particularly useful when there is limited data for the target task.
  9. Anomaly Detection: This focuses on identifying unusual patterns or outliers in data. It is used in fraud detection, network security, and predictive maintenance.
  10. Time Series Analysis: This involves analyzing data points indexed in time order. Examples include stock price prediction, weather forecasting, and sensor data analysis.
  11. Recommender Systems: These systems provide personalized recommendations to users based on their preferences and behaviors. Examples include product recommendations on e-commerce sites and movie recommendations on streaming platforms.
  12. Generative Models: These models learn the underlying distribution of data and can generate new, synthetic data that resembles the training data. Examples include generative adversarial networks (GANs) and variational autoencoders (VAEs).

Each of these branches has its own set of techniques, algorithms, and applications, contributing to the rich and diverse field of machine learning.

In which category would you put drug discovery by AI?

Drug discovery by AI can be considered a multidisciplinary application that draws from several branches of machine learning. Here are some of the key categories within machine learning that are relevant to drug discovery:

1. Supervised Learning: Used for tasks like predicting the properties of new compounds, classifying molecules based on their biological activity, and predicting drug-target interactions.

2. Unsupervised Learning: Used for clustering compounds based on their structural similarities, identifying patterns in large datasets of chemical structures, and dimensionality reduction to visualize complex chemical spaces.

3. Deep Learning: Utilized for tasks such as molecular property prediction, drug-target interaction prediction, and generative models for designing new molecules. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and recurrent neural networks (RNNs) are often employed in these tasks.

4. Reinforcement Learning: Used for optimizing molecular structures by iteratively modifying compounds based on feedback from simulations or experimental data.

5. Generative Models: Employed to generate new molecular structures with desired properties. Techniques like generative adversarial networks (GANs) and variational autoencoders (VAEs) are used to create novel compounds.

6. Natural Language Processing (NLP): Used for mining scientific literature and patents to extract relevant information about drugs, targets, and biological pathways.

7. Computer Vision: Applied in analyzing microscopy images, cellular assays, and other visual data to understand the effects of drugs on biological systems.

8. Transfer Learning: Used to leverage pre-trained models on large datasets to improve performance on smaller, more specific datasets related to drug discovery.

9. Time Series Analysis: Used for analyzing temporal data, such as monitoring the effects of drugs over time in clinical trials or in vitro experiments.

10. Recommender Systems: Applied to suggest potential drug candidates or combinations based on similarity to known effective compounds or biological targets.

Drug discovery by AI is a complex and interdisciplinary field that integrates various machine learning techniques to address the challenges of identifying, designing, and optimizing new therapeutic compounds. The ultimate goal is to accelerate the drug discovery process, reduce costs, and increase the likelihood of finding effective and safe drugs.

If you're interest by AI driven drug discovery,

Stay tuned ...