Welcome to the first of the AI Series blog posts where we’ll discover lots about AI in simple terms.
Here’s a diagram I’ve been thinking about lately. I’ll break it down below, but what I love about it is how it captures something simple and powerful I’ve realized while building with AI: every element is a modular plug-in. Once connected, you’re off and running.
Over the past few months of diving deep into AI, I’ve been carrying around this mental image. The media is flooded with jargon, hype, and confusion—but what we really need is simplicity. Especially when explaining this to clients, clarity matters.
Let’s walk through the pieces in the image above.
LLMs (Large Language Model)
This is the “brain” that makes AI talk like a human. It’s what gives AI the ability to reason, respond, and interact in natural language.
When you hear names like ChatGPT, Claude, Deepseek, Mistral, or LLaMA—those are all different LLMs. Each one has its own strengths: some are trained to code, some are better at images or video, and others are more conversational or specialized in a niche.
Think of these like different engines under the hood.
RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation)
This is AI’s memory system. It lets the AI reference your actual documents. Like spreadsheets, SOPs, HR manuals, or emails so it can give meaningful answers based on your real-world data.
The beauty here is that the data doesn’t have to be perfectly organized. As long as it exists, AI can start working with it. For businesses, this becomes the core of a powerful assistant.
If you’re serious about bringing AI into your company, RAG is where the magic really happens. Start gathering your docs—nirvana awaits.
System Prompt/Instruction
This is like the AI’s mission statement. You give it personality, tone, and direction here.
Example: “You are a helpful customer support agent who responds quickly, uses light humor, and sticks to brief, actionable answers.”
You can also shape what it knows, what it ignores, how it behaves, and even add example Q&A. This is your AI’s starting context and can act like a “pre-memory” before you plug in documents.
If you’re just getting started, this is an easy way to make AI feel purpose-built without needing a developer.
Tools
Just like humans have tools, AI does too. These are extra functions you can bolt on. Like plugins for WordPress or browser extensions.
Tools like:
- Whisper for speech recognition
- DALL·E for generating images
- Search to browse the web
- And more…
When you combine them with everything else—LLMs, RAG, prompts—you get real workflow power. Like:
“Hey AI, write my next blog post.”
AI drafts it, formats it, posts it across platforms, creates a podcast, turns it into a YouTube video, and emails your team to let them know it’s live.
It’s like having a team of interns. Fast ones.
This is ultimately the power we are all looking for. The new stone tools to live our best lives.
Speech
If you want your AI to talk, or listen, you’ll need to plug in tools like Whisper for voice recognition and a text-to-speech model for replies. Simple as that.
Wrap Up
This is the core I keep returning to: AI isn’t one big, magic thing. It’s a set of small, powerful pieces that plug into each other. LLMs to think. RAG to remember. Prompts to guide. Tools to act. And Speech to talk.
Once you see it this way, it becomes less mysterious—and more like building with blocks.
And the best part? You don’t need to be an engineer to start. Just someone curious enough to try.
If you’re ready to explore what AI can do for your work or business, I’m always happy to help. Let’s build something incredible together.