๐Ÿง  AI Basics: From Prompts to RAG in 12 Easy Steps ๐Ÿš€

April 3, 2025

๐Ÿ˜‡ 12 Steps to Understand AI (no apostles included, I swear!) ๐Ÿ˜‚๐Ÿ™

Ever asked WTF is a RAG and all those confusing AI terms?
The world of applied artificial intelligence is totally here ๐Ÿค–, and we're all getting sucked into it whether we like it or not. I thought it'd be cool to clear things up, since I keep seeing people mixing them up or pretending they know.
If you're just getting started or need a quick refresher, THIS is your post! ๐Ÿ’ก

Here are 12 key AI concepts, organized from the simplest to most complete. No rocket science here, just curiosity ๐Ÿง‘โ€๐Ÿ’ปโœจ

๐Ÿ” Let's simplify these 12 fancy words

  • โœ๏ธ Prompt: The text you feed the model to ask or instruct something.
  • ๐Ÿค– LLM (Large Language Model): Models like GPT-4 that understand human language and generate responses.
  • ๐ŸŽฏ Fine-tuning: Training a model with your own data to make it specialized.
  • ๐Ÿ“‹ Instruction tuning: Special fine-tuning to make a model follow clear, structured instructions.
  • ๐Ÿ”ข Embedding: Turning text into numerical vectors to enable meaning-based search.
  • ๐Ÿ“š Vector DB: Databases storing embeddings to quickly find similar meanings (like Chroma, Pinecone).
  • ๐Ÿ› ๏ธ External Tool/API: Functions (APIs) that models can call to perform specific tasks.
  • โ›“๏ธ Prompt chaining: Connecting multiple prompts to solve complex tasks step-by-step.
  • ๐Ÿ•ต๏ธ Agent: Systems using models and tools to independently make decisions and take actions.
  • ๐Ÿง‘โ€๐Ÿ’ป Orchestration Framework: Tools like LangChain or Semantic Kernel (.NET) that integrate models, data, and logic together.
  • ๐ŸŽจ Visual Orchestration UI (e.g., Flowise): No-code visual interface to build LangChain-style workflows without coding.
  • ๐Ÿ“ก MCP (Model Context Protocol): A standardized way for models to interact with external tools and APIs.
  • ๐ŸŒ RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation): Advanced technique where the model retrieves real info (documents, data) before respondingโ€”combining everything above.

โš ๏ธ If youโ€™re dying to correct meโ€ฆ yeah, I know itโ€™s 13 concepts. But cโ€™mon ๐Ÿคทโ€โ™‚๏ธ, I had to say โ€œ12 stepsโ€ or Iโ€™d miss the apostles joke ๐Ÿ˜‡โœ๏ธ๐Ÿ˜‚ Letโ€™s keep the spirit light, shall we?


๐Ÿ“˜ The Big Picture (literally!)

RAG Diagram

๐ŸŽฏ Bottom Line: Understanding these concepts gives you all you need to jump right into AI, whether coding or using visual tools. Let's build something awesome! ๐Ÿš€๐Ÿ’ช

#AI #LangChain #Flowise #SemanticKernel #PromptEngineering #RAG #Embedding #FineTuning