Theoretical Introduction to Generative AI

Most of the knowledge that humans have discovered or created is processed, stored, accessed, and transmitted by pictorial or auditory means or in the form of written natural language. As such, those modalities (text, images, audio and video) are the most potent interfaces into, or tools of, thought, allowing one to understand, explore, shape, and express complex ideas and abstract concepts. With generative AI, natural language, imagery, and audio become machine-readable/producible formats that open up new worlds and inherently new challenges from academic, societal, economic, and individual perspectives.