Everyone uses AI, but few understand the fundamental principles of how AI comprehends human language. The key lies in embeddings—the trick of converting words into numbers.

For example, "I like food" might become [1,5,-6,4,2], while "I love eating" turns into [1.3,5,-6,4,2.5]. The words differ, but the numbers are similar. This is how AI captures semantics.

When you type "What is the refund policy" into a customer service chatbot, the AI converts the question into a numerical vector and searches for the closest numerical match in its document database. Once it finds the matching refund policy text, the AI injects it into a response template. The entire process is like using GPS to locate semantic coordinates.

Some argue this proves AI is merely a tool for mundane tasks, relying entirely on probability calculations. But from another perspective, AI's "sense of smell" is millions of times sharper than humans—each word is like a unique scent molecule, and embeddings are its olfactory nerves, detecting semantic patterns invisible to humans.

Of course, the technology is far from perfect. Numbers can quantify semantic distance, but they can't grasp the pain of "pizza burning the roof of your mouth" or calculate the emotional surge triggered by the word "first love" at 3 AM. Ultimately, embeddings are just a crude mathematical imprint of language.