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Are You Sick of Explaining AI? (The Computer Brain in Simple Words)

Let's be honest. Trying to read about Artificial Intelligence (AI) can make your head hurt. It's full of confusing names and three-letter words like LLM, RAG, and MCP.

If you work with this stuff, you have two problems:

  1. You have to learn it all yourself.
  2. Then you have to explain it to everyone else, your clients, your boss, or maybe even your parents who just want to know how the "talking phone brain" works.

It feels like trying to read space papers when you just want to know how the space ship works!

Inspired by Thing Explainer (a great book that explains complex things using only the 1,000 most common words), I created a set of slides to explain all the Computer Brain Things using only the simplest, most common words. The only exceptions are the actual names of the technologies themselves.

The goal is to show that these "computer brain things" aren't magic, they are just sets of simple helpers with very distinct jobs.

Embedded slides above. Click to progress through the slides
(Sometimes embedded slides are funny, you might need to reload)

Now that you've seen the slides, how does this all fit together...

What People Make with the Computer Brains

When you start mixing and matching these simple components, you can build powerful tools. These are the practical helper teams people build:

  • Talk to Computer Brain

    • Uses: Big Word Machine + Find-and-Tell Thing + Word-Feel Numbers + Number-Space Boxes.

    • What it does: Talks with you, and looks up notes to answer better.

    • Remember: The computer brain sometimes makes things up if it sounds right, so check its answers.

  • Picture Finder

    • Uses: Look-See Machine + Word-Feel Numbers + Number-Space Boxes.

    • What it does: Finds "pictures like this one" or puts "cat" words to cat photos.

  • Art Maker

    • Uses: Dream-Machine + Make-New-Stuff Machine + Be Nice Checker Friend.

    • What it does: Makes new pictures from your words, and tries not to make bad ones.

    • Remember: People who taught the computer brain dream machine let it look at pictures that were stolen, so please do not steal.

  • Game Brain

    • Uses: Many Yes No Brain + Get-Better-Play.

    • What it does: Learns to play games or drive cars by trying and trying.

  • Helper Team

    • Uses: Same-Talk Helpers + Big Word Machine+ Look-See Machine.

    • What it does: Has one worker to read, one to look, one to explain, all passing answers around.

  • Tiny Phone Brain

    • Uses: Small Many Yes No Brain + Tiny Brain on Your Phone.

    • What it does: Runs on your phone to check faces, hear words, or help without outside cloud computer.

The Simple Summary

Here is the quick-look at what the main groups of helpers do:

  • Brains (LLM, Neural Nets, Vision) = think.

  • Memory things (RAG, Vector, Embeddings) = remember and find stuff.

  • Play/learn to do better (Reinforce) = get better over time.

  • Make-new-stuff (Generative, Diffusion) = create.

  • Do things together (MCP, Multi-Agents) = share jobs.

  • Be Nice Checker Friend (Ethics) = stay safe.

Use These Simple Words!

If you want to use this content (the simple words or the slides) to help explain AI to your own clients or team, please feel free! Just make sure to credit me, Anders Najdecki, and drop me a line at to let me know where you're using it, I'd love to see it in the wild.

Got a Big Project? Let's Talk!

I hope this helps you explain the "computer brain things" a lot easier next time.

If you have an interesting project that needs a technical consultant who can not only build the future but also explain it to the people paying for it, see if I'm available, I'm always looking for smart, challenging work.