It may seem like generative AI is the only game in town, or at least the only AI model worth paying attention to. But folks have been using AI models to do all kinds of things for years before ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini came on the scene.
Today, I’m talking about the three different broadly defined categories of AI—classification, predictive, and generative—and what they’re good for.
Classification vs. Predictive vs. Generative AI Models: What’s the Diff?
Classification and predictive models have been foundational to AI for decades, powering applications like spam filters, cyber security tools, big data analysis, and demand forecasting. However, with recent advances, generative models like GPT and DALL-E have taken the spotlight, bringing up interesting existential (and legal) questions about the nature of creativity and creative work going forward. Understanding the distinctions and history of these models is key to grasping how AI continues to shape industries and innovation today.
Let’s see which category best applies to your particular problem.
AI classification models
A classification model is built to recognize, understand, and group data into preset categories. The model is fully trained using the training data and then evaluated using test data before being used to respond to unseen data. In general, such models infer answers for the current moment in time, for example, deciding whether an email is spam or phishing. In that case, the decision is based on comparing the incoming email to a model trained on previously classified email messages, both ones that the user has set or ones that the platform has. (The two are related, of course, as the platform’s filters often update to include aggregate user data.)
In business, classification models drive applications like spam detection, customer segmentation, and fraud detection. Healthcare uses classification models to diagnose diseases based on medical images or patient data. In finance, they help identify high-risk transactions. Social media platforms rely on these models to filter content, detect hate speech, and recommend posts. Overall, classification models are key to organizing large datasets efficiently and making decisions based on patterns, helping automate and optimize numerous industry processes.
AI prediction models
Predictive AI models utilize historical data, patterns, and trends to train the model, so they can be used to make informed decisions about future events or outcomes. Using Drive Stats as an example, we could theoretically build a model that, when given data about a particular drive model and failure rates, predicts the chance that a given hard drive will fail in the next 90 days. Predictive AI models typically require large amounts of data to be trained and are computationally expensive to generate.
Predicting Hard Drive Failure Rates with AI
Okay, we were being coy when we said “example.” Check out Andy Klein’s Tech Day 2024 presentation, “Predicting Hard Drive Failure Rates with AI” to see how this kind of predictive model works.
AI prediction models help predict customer behavior, sales trends, and demand, aiding in decision making and resource planning. In finance, these models are crucial for stock price forecasting, risk assessment, and credit scoring. Healthcare utilizes prediction models for patient outcome predictions, disease progression, and treatment effectiveness. They are also applied in weather forecasting, supply chain optimization, and energy usage management. By analyzing past data, prediction models provide insights that help organizations anticipate trends, make proactive decisions, and optimize performance across various industries.
Generative AI models
You know this one. Generative AI is about creating (sort of) new content. It uses neural networking, deep learning, and other techniques to infer and generate content that is based on patterns it observes in existing content all while mimicking the style and structure as requested. Image generators such as DALL-E and Stable Diffusion, and large language models like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini are easily accessible AI applications which have brought AI into the public eye.
Generative AI is at turns the thing that will revolutionize everything, a scary specter with near-sentience that will steal your job, or a big hallucinating fluke that tells you to put glue on pizza. There are some pretty cool use cases—for one, researchers are using generative AI for new drug discovery. But you’re most likely to run into generative AI in the following use cases: customer service chatbots, coding assistants, marketing support, and general business assistants that generate transcripts and summaries.
Unlocking the power of AI
Even with all the current hype around generative AI we are still in the early stages of development when it comes to AI systems given they are most useful in responding to queries based on the subject matter with which they were trained.
For example, an AI model trained to play chess might find playing checkers to be difficult. While the board, and number of players are the same, can a chess-playing AI model infer the allowed checker moves based on its understanding of chess? Even generative AI models like ChatGPT which are trained on a wide variety of subjects are still lacking a key ingredient to be truly useful to your organization: your data.
An AI chatbot, for example, isn’t going to perform the way you want it to without being powered by your organization’s data. And, how do you build an AI powered tool while keeping your private data private? We started to explore that very question in a recent webinar, “Leveraging your Cloud Storage Data in AI/ML Apps and Services.”
Tune in to learn more about the various ways AI/ML applications use and store data and get insights from our customers who leverage Backblaze B2 Cloud Object Storage for their AI/ML needs.
