Explaining Vector Databases in 3 Levels of Difficulty

Vector databases have been getting a lot of attention recently, with many vector database startups raising millions in funding. Chances are you have probably already heard of them but didn’t really care about them until now —at least, that’s what I guess why you are here now… If you are here just for the short answer, lets jump right in: <h1>Definition: What is a Vector Database?</h1> A vector database is a type of database that stores and manages unstructured data, such as text, images, or audio, in vector embeddings (high-dimensional vectors) to make it easy to find and retrieve similar objects quickly. If that definition only caused more confusion, then let’s go step by step. This article is inspired by <a href="https://www.wired.com/video/series/5-levels" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">WIRED’s “5 Levels” Video Series</a> and unpacks what vector databases are in the following three levels of difficulty: <ul> <li><a href="https://towardsdatascience.com/explaining-vector-databases-in-3-levels-of-difficulty-fc392e48ab78#8273" rel="noopener ugc nofollow">Explain It Like I’m 5</a></li> <li><a href="https://towardsdatascience.com/explaining-vector-databases-in-3-levels-of-difficulty-fc392e48ab78#ffae" rel="noopener ugc nofollow">Explaining Vector Databases to Digital Natives and Tech Enthusiasts</a></li> <li><a href="https://towardsdatascience.com/explaining-vector-databases-in-3-levels-of-difficulty-fc392e48ab78#61cf" rel="noopener ugc nofollow">Explaining Vector Databases to Engineers and Data Professionals</a></li> </ul> <h1>Vector Databases: Explain It Like I’m 5 (ELI5)</h1> This is slightly off-topic, but do you know what I don’t understand? When people arrange their bookshelves by color. — Yikes! How do they find a book when they don’t know what color the book cover is? <a href="https://towardsdatascience.com/explaining-vector-databases-in-3-levels-of-difficulty-fc392e48ab78">Read More</a>