Beyond the blob: a conceptual genAI architecture

What is AI? I've written about this before, and given that it is an emerging technology, I understand that there are many conceptions of AI. In this post I'm referring specifically to generative AI.

However, after having reviewed the Nth management/IS manuscript that treats genAI as some amorphous blob that does everything and nothing, and learns from everything and nothing, I decided I should try and break it down into components. My emphasis here is function and modularity of the various components that come together to perform "genAI".

Will keep iterating on this for a class Samer is teaching.