Understanding Artificial Intelligence
From basics to building your own AI tools
A structured course taking you from "What is AI?" to building your own AI-powered tools. No prerequisites, no login required.
What is AI?
3 lessons · 34 min
A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence
Trace AI's journey from Turing's original vision through decades of breakthroughs, setbacks, and the revolution that changed everything.
Types of AI: From Narrow to General
Learn the crucial distinction between narrow AI (what we have today), general AI (the goal), and superintelligence (the speculation).
Machine Learning: How Computers Learn from Data
Understand how machine learning works by teaching computers to learn from examples rather than following hand-written rules.
How Large Language Models Work
3 lessons · 37 min
What is a Language Model?
Discover how the simple idea of predicting the next word scales up into the powerful AI systems we use today.
Training: Data, Compute, and Algorithms
Learn how large language models are built from three essential ingredients: massive datasets, enormous computing power, and clever algorithms.
Tokens, Attention, and How Models Generate Text
Peek inside a language model to understand tokenization, the attention mechanism, and how temperature and sampling create varied responses.
Using AI Effectively
3 lessons · 33 min
Prompt Engineering: Talking to AI
Master the art of writing prompts that get AI to produce exactly what you need, with practical before-and-after examples.
Context Windows, Memory, and Limitations
Learn why AI models "forget," what context windows are, and strategies for working within these constraints.
When AI Excels vs. When It Struggles
Know exactly which tasks AI handles brilliantly and which it reliably botches, so you can use it where it helps most.
AI Pathologies
3 lessons · 37 min
Hallucinations: Why Models Make Things Up
Learn what AI hallucinations are, why they happen at a fundamental level, and how to spot them before they cause harm.
Sycophancy, Bias, and Confident Wrong Answers
Explore the AI tendencies toward people-pleasing, inherent bias, and unwarranted confidence that can lead users astray.
Detecting and Mitigating AI Errors
Build a practical toolkit of strategies for verifying AI outputs, catching errors, and maintaining human oversight.
AI Ethics and Safety
3 lessons · 36 min
Bias in Training Data and Outputs
Understand how training data reflects societal biases, see real-world examples, and learn about mitigation approaches.
The Alignment Problem
Explore why it's so difficult to specify what we want AI to do, and why getting this wrong could have serious consequences.
Responsible AI Use and Regulation
Survey the current regulatory landscape and learn practical principles for responsible AI use in your own work.
Hands-On with AI
3 lessons · 42 min
Getting API Access and Making Your First Call
Get set up with the Anthropic API and make your first programmatic call to Claude — the foundation for building AI-powered tools.
Building a Simple Chatbot
Build a functional chatbot in Python that maintains conversation history — your first real AI application.
AI-Assisted Development with Claude Code
Learn how Claude Code transforms software development — from writing code to debugging, refactoring, and building entire features.