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Practical AI · Thursday, August 6, 2026

Defining AI Models: A Functional Perspective

Daniel Weineck and Chris Benson discuss the definition of AI models, likening them to software functions that transform data. They explain how models like large language models (LLMs) and vision models process specific inputs to generate outputs, and note that not all models are neural network-based.

personDaniel WeineckpersonChris Benson

The tape

3 quotes
an AI model is really, if you're more coming from the technical side, you might think about this like a function or a software function. Maybe if you're coming from another angle, really it's just a transformation of data, right? Like I give you an image and you tell me what's in the image.
Daniel Weineck
it's still neural networks, you know, plus plus architectures, uh, you know, in terms of how that function is.
Chris Benson
But at the end of the day, it's a function or a data transformation.
Daniel Weineck
Heard on Practical AI — “Models, Harnesses, and Multi-Agent Systems, published Thursday, August 6, 2026. Heardvine summarizes and quotes with attribution and timestamps, and links to the original everywhere.
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Defining AI Models: A Functional Perspective — Heardvine