A perceptron is a fundamental building block of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Think of it as a simplified model of a neuron in our brain. It takes inputs, multiplies them by their respective weights, adds them up, and applies a threshold, also known as the activation function, to determine its output. This output is then compared to the desired output, and the perceptron adjusts its weights using a process called gradient descent to minimize the difference between the actual and desired outputs. Essentially, the perceptron learns from data to make predictions or classify new examples, just like how we learn from examples to make decisions in our daily lives.