Resources
Terminology
AI Terminology
Key terms and definitions used throughout the course.
Interactive Tools
Hands-on tools for exploring how AI systems work, from text generation to neural networks.
Markov Babbler
Build a simple text generator from scratch. See how counting word pairs creates a model that can produce surprisingly coherent (and sometimes hilarious) text.
Markov Babbler
Select or paste text to train a simple bigram model, then generate text one word at a time. At each step, you can see the probability distribution over the next possible words.
LLM Probability Explorer
Pedagogy & details →Watch a real language model predict the next word. Choose a sentence starter, see the probability distribution over possible next words, and build sentences one token at a time.
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Temperature Compare
Pedagogy & details →See how temperature affects language model output. Compare the same prompt at different temperature settings side-by-side to understand the tradeoff between predictability and creativity.
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Neuron Explorer
Experiment with a single artificial neuron. Adjust inputs, weights, bias, and activation function to understand the fundamental building block of neural networks.
Neuron Explorer
A neuron listens to signals from its neighbors. Each connection can amplify, dampen, or even reverse a signal. If the total is strong enough, the neuron fires and sends its own signal onward. Try adjusting the sliders to see when this neuron fires.
How strong is each incoming signal?
How much does each connection let through?
How eager is this neuron to fire?
Try These
Hover over a button to see what it does. Try "Your turn!" to test yourself!
Digit Recognition Network
A real neural network that recognizes handwritten digits. Draw digits to classify them, train the network from scratch and watch it learn, or step through how errors flow backward and adjust weights.
Digit Recognition Network
A neural network that recognizes handwritten digits. 784 → 16 → 16 → 10 neurons.
Pre-trained model
Trained on 60,000 examples before you arrived
Hover over a neuron in the diagram to see what it responds to. Click to pin.
Embedding Explorer
Pedagogy & details →Explore how AI represents meaning as geometry. Search for words to see what’s nearby, or try analogies to discover that you can do arithmetic on meaning.
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Training Stage Matcher
Pedagogy & details →See how pretraining, instruction tuning, and RLHF each change the same model’s behavior. Guess which training stage produced a response, then see all three side-by-side.
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Preference Rater
Pedagogy & details →Experience what RLHF raters do. Compare two AI responses optimized for different values, pick which is better, then see what tradeoff you just made.
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Readings
Intelligence & Creativity
AI Is Nothing Like a Brain, and That's OK
Quanta Magazine — Yasemin Saplakoglu · 21 min read
AlphaGo (Documentary)
AlphaGo - The Movie · 68 min read
ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web
The New Yorker — Ted Chiang · 18 min read
Companion Guide: François Chollet on the Dwarkesh Podcast
Dwarkesh Podcast — François Chollet · 6 min read
Don’t Call It 'Intelligence'
The Atlantic — Charles Yu · 9 min read
The Case That A.I. Is Thinking
The New Yorker — James Somers · 29 min read
The Human Skill That Eludes AI
The Atlantic — Jasmine Sun · 10 min read
The Unpredictable Abilities Emerging From Large AI Models
Quanta Magazine — Stephen Ornes · 12 min read
How AI Works
Training & Data
A.I. Is Writing Fiction. Publishers Are Unprepared.
The New York Times — Alexandra Alter · 11 min read
Americans Are Trying to Stop Data Centers Because They Can’t Stop A.I.
The New York Times — David Wallace-Wells · 10 min read
How Bad Is Plagiarism, Really?
The New Yorker — Anthony Lane · 20 min read
Inside the Dirty, Dystopian World of AI Data Centers
The Atlantic — Matteo Wong · 21 min read
Opinion | Americans Are Trying to Stop Data Centers Because They Can't Stop A.I.
The New York Times — David Wallace-Wells · 10 min read
The Ecstasy of Influence
Harper's Magazine — Jonathan Lethem · 57 min read
The Hypocrisy at the Heart of the AI Industry
The Atlantic — Alex Reisner · 8 min read
Work & Labor
AI Isn't Coming for Everyone's Job
The Atlantic — Adam Ozimek · 7 min read
Can A.I. Be Pro-Worker?
The New Yorker — John Cassidy · 5 min read
Coders Coded Their Job Away. Why Are So Many of Them Happy About It?
The New York Times — Clive Thompson · 33 min read
How to Guess If Your Job Will Exist in Five Years
The Atlantic — Annie Lowrey · 8 min read
Is Taste the One Thing A.I. Can't Replace?
The New York Times — Joseph Bernstein · 6 min read
Opinion | The A.I. Labor Crisis Is Coming. This Is the Solution.
The New York Times — Gina Raimondo · 5 min read
Who Cares If AI Brings Down the Economy?
The Atlantic — Lila Shroff · 8 min read
Why I'm not worried about AI job loss
David Oks — David Oks · 19 min read
Safety & Governance
Anthropic and Donald Trump's Dangerous Alignment Problem
The New Yorker — Gideon Lewis-Kraus · 27 min read
Anthropic’s Ethical Stand Could Be Paying Off
The Atlantic — Ken Harbaugh · 5 min read
Cascade of A.I. Fakes About War With Iran Causes Chaos Online
The New York Times — Stuart A. Thompson, Alexander Cardia · 7 min read
Clawed
Hyperdimensional — Dean W. Ball · 19 min read
Does A.I. Need a Constitution?
The New Yorker — Jill Lepore · 26 min read
I'm glad the Anthropic fight is happening now
Dwarkesh Podcast — Dwarkesh Patel · 23 min read
OpenAI Is Opening the Door to Government Spying
The Atlantic — Matteo Wong · 11 min read
The Dissonance of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei
The Atlantic — Ross Andersen · 12 min read
The Fog of AI
The Atlantic — Mahsa Alimardani · 8 min read
Culture & Society
A.I. Bots Can Act as Personal Digital Assistants, but There Are Serious Risks
The New York Times — Cade Metz · 8 min read
How AI Is Creeping Into The New York Times
The Atlantic — Vauhini Vara · 9 min read
Love in the Time of A.I. Companions
The New Yorker — Anna Wiener · 44 min read
Michael Pollan Punctures the AI Bubble
The Atlantic — Charles Finch · 8 min read
Sorry, Mom. You're Chatting With an A.I. Agent, Not Your Son.
The New York Times — Natallie Rocha, Arsenii Vaselenko · 7 min read
The First AI Crisis Is Psychological
The Atlantic — Nick Dothée · 7 min read
The Medium is the Message
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man — Marshall McLuhan · 42 min read
Other
A Game Plan for the AI Boom
The Atlantic — Matteo Wong · 9 min read
A.I. Has a Message Problem of Its Own Making
The New Yorker — Kyle Chayka · 5 min read
A.I. Populism Is Here. And No One Is Ready.
The New York Times — David Wallace-Wells · 12 min read
AI Agents Are Taking America by Storm
The Atlantic — Lila Shroff · 9 min read
Anthropic's Little Brother
The Atlantic — Matteo Wong · 6 min read
Can AI Find You Love?
The Atlantic — Annie Joy Williams · 14 min read
Claude Mythos Is Everyone's Problem
The Atlantic — Matteo Wong · 6 min read
Dario Amodei — The Adolescence of Technology
Economists Are Drawing Stronger Connections Between A.I. and Jobs
The New York Times — Ben Casselman · 11 min read
Even Without Internet Access, Prisoners Are Trying to Benefit From A.I.
The New York Times — Evan Gorelick, Alex Kent · 7 min read
He Warned About the Dangers of A.I. If Only His Father Had Listened.
The New York Times — Teddy Rosenbluth · 17 min read
How 4chan Gamers Accidentally Invented AI Reasoning
The Atlantic — Alex Reisner · 8 min read
How a Congressional Primary Became a Proxy Battle Over A.I.
The New Yorker — Gideon Lewis-Kraus · 23 min read
How A.I. Helped One Man (and His Brother) Build a $1.8 Billion Company
The New York Times — Erin Griffith · 12 min read
How Project Maven Put A.I. Into the Kill Chain
The New Yorker — Gideon Lewis-Kraus · 17 min read
Imagine Losing Your Job to the Mere Possibility of AI
The Atlantic — Lila Shroff · 8 min read
In 'The AI Doc,' Sam Altman and Dario Amodei Go on the Record
The New York Times — Alissa Wilkinson · 5 min read
Is It Wrong to Write a Book with A.I.?
The New Yorker — Joshua Rothman · 14 min read
Maybe AI Isn't a Bubble After All
The Atlantic — Rogé Karma · 13 min read
No, AI Isn't Conscious … Yet
The Atlantic — Ross Andersen · 7 min read
No, Netanyahu Is Not Dead
The Atlantic — Yair Rosenberg · 8 min read
Opinion | Anthropic's Restraint Is a Terrifying Warning Sign
The New York Times — Thomas L. Friedman · 7 min read
Opinion | Don't Use A.I. to Do This
The New York Times — Colson Whitehead · 6 min read
Opinion | I Saw Something New in San Francisco
The New York Times — Ezra Klein · 11 min read
Opinion | I Teach Creative Writing. This Is What A.I. Is Doing to Students.
The New York Times — Meghan O'Rourke · 19 min read
Opinion | Political Campaigns Have No Idea What's About to Hit Them
The New York Times — Thomas B. Edsall · 13 min read
Opinion | Silicon Valley Is Bracing for a Permanent Underclass
The New York Times — Jasmine Sun · 24 min read
Opinion | The Future We Feared Is Already Here
The New York Times — Ezra Klein · 13 min read
Opinion | There's a 900-Year-Old Answer to Our Most Modern Problem
The New York Times — David French · 11 min read
Opinion | Why A.I. Will Never Replace Your Doctor
The New York Times — Danielle Ofri · 5 min read
Opinion | Why the A.I. Job Apocalypse (Probably) Won't Happen
The New York Times — Ezra Klein · 12 min read
Sam Altman May Control Our Future—Can He Be Trusted?
The New Yorker — Ronan Farrow, Andrew Marantz · 82 min read
That Meeting You Hate May Keep A.I. From Stealing Your Job
The New York Times — Noam Scheiber · 8 min read
The A.I. Industry Is Booming. When Will It Actually Make Money?
The New Yorker — John Cassidy · 10 min read
The AI Industry Wants to Automate Itself
The Atlantic — Matteo Wong, Lila Shroff · 8 min read
The AI Takeover of Education Is Just Getting Started
The Atlantic — Lila Shroff · 8 min read
The Big Bang: A.I. Has Created a Code Overload
The New York Times — Mike Isaac, Erin Griffith · 7 min read
The Escalating Global A.I. Arms Race
The New York Times — Sheera Frenkel, Paul Mozur, Adam Satariano · 12 min read
The Federal Safety Net Isn't Ready for Artificial Intelligence
The New York Times — Ben Casselman, Tony Romm · 9 min read
The Man Who Thought He Could Keep AI Safe
The Atlantic — Sebastian Mallaby · 9 min read
The People Outsourcing Their Thinking to AI
The Atlantic — Lila Shroff · 10 min read
The Secret to Understanding AI
The Atlantic — Josh Tyrangiel · 17 min read
The Secret Weapon Against AI Dominance
The Atlantic — Jacob Noti-Victor, Xiyin Tang · 8 min read
Think Twice Before Asking ChatGPT About Your Health
The Atlantic — Sage Lazzaro · 10 min read
U.S.C. Will Infuse A.I. Across University with $200 Million Donation
The New York Times — Alan Blinder · 4 min read
What Happens If Trump Seizes AI Companies
The Atlantic — Matteo Wong, Lila Shroff · 16 min read
What Is 'Jagged Intelligence' and How Can It Reframe the AI Debate?
The New York Times — Cade Metz · 8 min read
What Teens Are Doing With Those Role-Playing Chatbots
The New York Times — Kashmir Hill, Frances F. Denny · 15 min read
What Will It Take to Get A.I. Out of Schools?
The New Yorker — Jessica Winter · 23 min read
White House Considers Vetting A.I. Models Before They Are Released
The New York Times — Tripp Mickle, Julian E. Barnes, Sheera Frenkel, Dustin Volz · 6 min read
Why Do We Tell Ourselves Scary Stories About AI? | Quanta Magazine
Quanta Magazine — Amanda Gefter · 17 min read
Why It's Crucial We Understand How A.I. 'Thinks'
The New York Times — Oliver Whang · 22 min read
Will A.I. Make College Obsolete?
The New Yorker — Jay Caspian Kang · 12 min read
With A.I., Anyone Can Be an Influencer
The New Yorker — T. M. Brown · 10 min read
Young People Are Falling Behind, but Not Because of AI
The Atlantic — Rogé Karma · 9 min read