Introduction to Modern AI: Online Course on Machine Learning and Large Language Models

A minimal free version of this course will be offered online, simultaneous to the CMU offering, starting on 1/26 (with a two-week delay from the CMU course).

This course provides an introduction to how modern AI systems work. By 'modern AI', we specifically mean the machine learning methods and large language models (LLMs) behind systems like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude.

Despite their seemingly amazing generality, the basic techniques that underlie these AI models are surprisingly simple: a minimal LLM implementation leverages a fairly small set of machine learning methods and architectures, and can be written in a few hundred lines of code.

In most academic settings, the term 'Artificial Intelligence' refers to techniques much broader than machine learning and LLMs. However, in modern usage the term often refers to these kind of AI systems like chatbots that many of us use every day, and for this course we'll use this common-usage sense.