People say a neural network "learns to see" or "understands images," and it sounds like sci-fi. It isn't. A neural net does something much more mechanical — and once you see the shape of it, the mystery evaporates. No math in this one, just the intuition.
This is Day 4 of AIFromZero, my concept-a-day series explaining how AI actually works.
A neuron is a tiny detector
Forget the brain metaphor. A single artificial neuron looks at some numbers, weighs them up, and outputs one number that answers: "how much do I see the thing I look for?" That's it — a little detector with a dial for how strongly it fires.
Stack them into layers, and a hierarchy appears
