Understanding AI

Everything I teach in the AI Basics Course, in text form. Each guide covers one core idea about how AI actually works, plus the one thing to do about it. Start at the top and work down.

• 1.

  What AI Is and How It Actually Works

  AI is a prediction engine, and why that changes how you prompt it.

• 2.

  What AI Actually Knows (and What It Doesn't)

  Training data, knowledge cutoffs, and why it knows nothing about you.

• 3.

  Why AI Knows About Recent Events

  The web search tool, and why it doesn't always use it.

• 4.

  Why AI Sometimes Makes Things Up

  Hallucinations, plus why it agrees with you even when you're wrong.

• 5.

  Why AI Doesn't Remember You

  Statelessness, and what "memory" actually is.

• 6.

  Why AI Gets Worse the Longer You Use It

  The context window limit, and two tricks to beat it.