AI Foundations
The essentials everyone should know: what AI is, how it learns, and the ideas the whole field builds on.
beginner · 45 minutes
A grounded, jargon-free introduction to what artificial intelligence actually is in 2024-2025 - and what it is not. You will learn how AI, machine learning, and deep learning relate, how modern models are trained and used, and how to reason clearly about the sometimes-inflated claims made about their capabilities. By the end you will have the vocabulary and the mental models to think critically about AI systems you encounter every day.
What you'll learn
- What We Actually Mean by "AI"
- A Short, Honest History
- How Machines Learn: The Four Paradigms
- Training vs. Inference (and What a Model Really Is)
- What Frontier Models Can and Cannot Do
- Reasoning About AI Claims (and Your Vocabulary)