The execution of an AI system. An inference engine comprises the hardware and software that produces results. Years ago and relying entirely on human rules, "expert systems" were the first AI inference engines; however, today's neural networks and GPT architectures have greatly surpassed them in capability.
Inference vs. Training
The inference engine is the processing component of an AI in contrast to the fact gathering or learning side of the system, which uses considerably more computer power. Large language models that take in trillions of data examples can take weeks to be fully trained.
After the training phase is over, the inference engine is the AI component that does the actual work of making decisions and predictions or generating original content. See
AI training vs. inference,
AI processing methods,
AI training,
neural network,
GPT,
deep learning and
expert system.