AI Basics
No prerequisite jargon. Follow the lesson numbers and add one new idea at a time.
What is AI? Think of a brilliant store assistant who has seen thousands of customers
Forget robots and code for a moment. Lesson 001 uses a familiar shopping recommendation to explain what Artificial Intelligence actually does.
What is an AI model? Think of different specialists inside the same department store
If everything is called AI, why can one system write, another draw and another only recognize images? Lesson 002 separates AI from the model doing the job.
How does AI learn? Like seeing thousands of outfits until you develop an eye for style
Training AI is not about stuffing in one answer at a time. Lesson 003 uses fashion experience to explain data, patterns and how a model improves.
Why can the same AI question get a different answer? Think of one dress styled two different ways
AI does not simply retrieve one fixed answer. It generates text step by step, often with several plausible next choices. Lesson 008 explains why repeated prompts can differ.
What is multimodal AI? Think of an assistant who can read, see and listen
AI does not have to work with text alone. Lesson 012 explains multimodal AI through text, images, audio and video, and why combining clues matters.
What is fine-tuning? Continue training a model so a behavior becomes part of the model itself
Fine-tuning updates model parameters using additional training examples. Lesson 024 explains when it helps, how it differs from prompting and RAG, and why evaluation matters.
Why did “Attention Is All You Need” matter? The Transformer changed how models connect tokens
The Transformer made attention the central mechanism for relating tokens without recurrent processing. Lesson 031 explains queries, keys, values, self-attention, parallelism and limits.
OpenAI, Gemini and Grok: separate the company, product, model family and specific model
AI names are easy to mix up. Lesson 034 explains the difference between companies, products, model families and model versions using OpenAI, Google Gemini and xAI Grok as examples.
What are thinking and reasoning modes? The same AI can trade speed for more inference-time work
AI products often offer fast responses and higher reasoning effort. Learn how inference compute, latency, cost, tools and verification relate—and why more thinking is not always better.