{"id":656369,"date":"2025-03-09T02:30:06","date_gmt":"2025-03-08T23:30:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/ai-doesnt-really-learn-and-knowing-why-will-help-you-use-it-more-responsibly\/"},"modified":"2025-03-09T02:30:06","modified_gmt":"2025-03-08T23:30:06","slug":"ai-doesnt-really-learn-and-knowing-why-will-help-you-use-it-more-responsibly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/ai-doesnt-really-learn-and-knowing-why-will-help-you-use-it-more-responsibly\/","title":{"rendered":"#AI doesn&#8217;t really &#8216;learn&#8217;\u2014and knowing why will help you use it more responsibly"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_84 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-custom ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<label for=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a2a6bde7fb40\" class=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-label\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/label><input type=\"checkbox\"  id=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a2a6bde7fb40\" checked aria-label=\"Toggle\" \/><nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/ai-doesnt-really-learn-and-knowing-why-will-help-you-use-it-more-responsibly\/#AI_does_not_learn%E2%80%94at_least_not_like_humans_do\" >AI does not learn\u2014at least not like humans do<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-2\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/ai-doesnt-really-learn-and-knowing-why-will-help-you-use-it-more-responsibly\/#Once_trained_the_learning_stops\" >Once trained, the learning stops<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-3\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/ai-doesnt-really-learn-and-knowing-why-will-help-you-use-it-more-responsibly\/#What_does_this_mean_for_users\" >What does this mean for users?<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"article-gallery lightGallery\">\n<div data-thumb=\"https:\/\/scx1.b-cdn.net\/csz\/news\/tmb\/2023\/chatgpt-11.jpg\" data-src=\"https:\/\/scx2.b-cdn.net\/gfx\/news\/hires\/2023\/chatgpt-11.jpg\" data-sub-html=\"Credit: Unsplash\/CC0 Public Domain\">\n<figure class=\"article-img\">\n            <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/scx1.b-cdn.net\/csz\/news\/800a\/2023\/chatgpt-11.jpg\" alt=\"chatgpt\" title=\"Credit: Unsplash\/CC0 Public Domain\" width=\"800\" height=\"530\"\/><figcaption class=\"text-darken text-low-up text-truncate-js text-truncate mt-3\">\n                Credit: Unsplash\/CC0 Public Domain<br \/>\n            <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>What if we told you that artificial intelligence (AI) systems such as ChatGPT don&#8217;t actually learn? Many people we talk to are genuinely surprised to hear this.<\/p>\n<p>Even AI systems themselves will often tell you confidently that they are learning systems. Many <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mckinsey.com\/featured-insights\/mckinsey-explainers\/what-is-ai\" target=\"_blank\">reports<\/a> and even <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu\/items\/39de3d82-104e-4ea3-be64-670f56087f7f\" target=\"_blank\">academic papers<\/a> say the same. But this is due to a misconception\u2014or rather a loose understanding of what we mean by &#8220;learning&#8221; in AI.<\/p>\n<p>Yet, understanding more precisely how and when AI systems learn (and when they don&#8217;t) will make you a more productive and more responsible user of AI.<\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"AI_does_not_learn%E2%80%94at_least_not_like_humans_do\"><\/span>AI does not learn\u2014at least not like humans do<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Many misconceptions around AI stem from using words that have a certain meaning when <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/download-scripts-themes-apps\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"9\" title=\"Download Scripts &amp; Themes &amp; Apps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">app<\/a>lied to humans, such as learning. We know how humans learn, because we do it all the time. We have experiences; we do something that fails; we encounter something new; we read something surprising; and thus we remember, we update or change the way we do things.<\/p>\n<p>This is not how AI systems learn. There are two main differences.<\/p>\n<p>Firstly, AI systems do not learn from any specific experiences, which would allow them to understand things the way we humans do. Rather, they &#8220;learn&#8221; by encoding patterns from vast amounts of data\u2014using mathematics alone. This happens during the training process, when they are built.<\/p>\n<p>Take large language models, such as <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/openai.com\/index\/gpt-4\/\" target=\"_blank\">GPT-4<\/a>, the <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/technology\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"4\" title=\"Technology\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">technology<\/a> that powers <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/chatgpt.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">ChatGPT<\/a>. In a nutshell, it learns by encoding mathematical relationships between words (actually, <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/learn.microsoft.com\/en-us\/dotnet\/ai\/conceptual\/understanding-tokens\" target=\"_blank\">tokens<\/a>), with the aim of making predictions about what text goes with what other text. These relationships are extracted from vast amounts of data and encoded during a computationally intensive training phase.<\/p>\n<p>This form of &#8220;learning&#8221; is obviously very different to how humans learn.<\/p>\n<p>It has certain downsides in that AI often struggles with simple commonsense knowledge about the world that humans naturally learn by just living in the world.<\/p>\n<p>But AI training is also incredibly powerful, because large language models have &#8220;seen&#8221; text at a scale far beyond what any human can comprehend. That&#8217;s why these systems are so useful for language-based tasks, such as writing, summarizing, coding, or conversing. The fact that these systems don&#8217;t learn like us, but on a vast scale, makes them all-rounders at the kinds of things they do excel at.<\/p>\n<p>                                                                                                        <!-- TechX - News - In-article --><\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Once_trained_the_learning_stops\"><\/span>Once trained, the learning stops<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Most AI systems that most people use, such as ChatGPT, also do not learn once they are built. You could say AI systems don&#8217;t learn at all\u2014training is just how they&#8217;re built, it&#8217;s not how they work. The &#8220;P&#8221; in GPT literally stands for &#8220;pre-trained.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In technical terms, AI systems such as ChatGPT only engage in &#8220;training-time learning,&#8221; as part of their development, not in &#8220;run-time learning.&#8221; Systems that learn as they go do exist. But they are typically confined to a single task, for example, your Netflix algorithm recommending what to watch. Once it&#8217;s done, it&#8217;s done, as the saying goes.<\/p>\n<p>Being &#8220;pre-trained&#8221; means large language models are always stuck in time. Any updates to their training data require highly costly retraining, or at least so-called fine-tuning for smaller adjustments.<\/p>\n<p>That means ChatGPT does not learn from your prompts on an ongoing basis. And out of the box, a large language model does not remember anything. It holds in its memory only whatever occurs in a single chat session. Close the window, or start a new session, and it&#8217;s a clean sheet every time.<\/p>\n<p>There are ways around this, such as storing information about the user, but they are achieved at the application level; the AI model itself does not learn and remains unchanged until retrained (more on that in a moment).<\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"What_does_this_mean_for_users\"><\/span>What does this mean for users?<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>First, be aware of what you get from your AI assistant.<\/p>\n<p>Learning from text data means systems such as ChatGPT are language models, not knowledge models. While it is truly amazing how much knowledge gets encoded via the mathematical training process, these models are not always reliable when asked knowledge questions.<\/p>\n<p>Their real strength is working with language. And don&#8217;t be surprised when responses contain outdated information, given they are frozen in time, or that ChatGPT does not remember any facts you tell it.<\/p>\n<p>The good <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/news\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"2\" title=\"News\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">news<\/a> is AI developers have come up with some clever workarounds. For example, some versions of ChatGPT are now connected to the internet. To provide you with more timely information, they might perform a web search and insert the result into your prompt before generating the response.<\/p>\n<p>Another workaround is that AI systems can now remember things about you to personalize their responses. But this is done with a trick. It is not that the large language model itself learns or updates itself in real time. The information about you is stored in a separate database and is inserted into the prompt each time in ways that remain invisible.<\/p>\n<p>But it still means that you can&#8217;t correct the model when it gets something wrong (or teach it a fact), which it would remember to correct its answers for other users. The model can be personalized to an extent, but it still does not learn on the fly.<\/p>\n<p>Users who understand how exactly AI learns\u2014or doesn&#8217;t\u2014will invest more in developing effective prompting strategies, and treat the AI as an assistant\u2014one that always needs checking.<\/p>\n<p>Let the AI assist you. But make sure you do the learning, prompt by prompt.<\/p>\n<div class=\"d-inline-block text-medium my-4\">\n                                                Provided by<br \/>\n                                                                                                    The Conversation<br \/>\n                                                    \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"icon_open\" href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<svg>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<use href=\"https:\/\/techx.b-cdn.net\/tmpl\/v2\/img\/svg\/sprite.svg#icon_open\" x=\"0\" y=\"0\"\/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/svg><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n<p class=\"article-main__note mt-4\">\n                                                This article is republished from <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\" target=\"_blank\">The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/ai-doesnt-really-learn-and-knowing-why-will-help-you-use-it-more-responsibly-250923\" target=\"_blank\">original article<\/a>.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/counter.theconversation.com\/content\/250923\/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-advanced\" alt=\"The Conversation\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"\/>\n                                            <\/p>\n<p>                                        <!-- print only --><\/p>\n<div class=\"d-none d-print-block\">\n<p>\n                                                <strong>Citation<\/strong>:<br \/>\n                                                AI doesn&#8217;t really &#8216;learn&#8217;\u2014and knowing why will help you use it more responsibly (2025, March 8)<br \/>\n                                                retrieved 8 March 2025<br \/>\n                                                from https:\/\/techxplore.com\/news\/2025-03-ai-doesnt-responsibly.html\n                                            <\/p>\n<p>\n                                            This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no<br \/>\n                                            part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.\n                                            <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><script id=\"facebook-jssdk\" async=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/sdk.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/publications\/CAAqBwgKMN63nwsw68G3Aw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>If you want to read more Like this articles, you can visit our <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/category\/sciencee\/\" target=\"_blank\" >Science category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/news\/2025-03-ai-doesnt-responsibly.html\" target=\"_blank\" >Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Credit: Unsplash\/CC0 Public Domain What if we told you that artificial intelligence (AI) systems such as ChatGPT don&#8217;t actually learn? Many people we talk to are genuinely surprised to hear this. Even AI systems themselves will often tell you confidently that they are learning systems. Many reports and even academic papers say the same. But&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":656370,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/scx2.b-cdn.net\/gfx\/news\/hires\/2023\/chatgpt-11.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-656369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sciencee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=656369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/656370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}