JavaScript
Basic Syntax
Variables
Data types
Numbers
Basic IO
Conditionals
Nested conditions
Git branches
GUI Tools for Git
Code style: Basics
Introduction to AI
Practice
Assignment
Back to core program
What does "AI" actually mean?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a broad field focused on building systems that can perform tasks that usually require human intelligence: recognizing patterns, making predictions, optimising decisions, and learning from data.
Real world AI applications
- Search engines (e.g., Google, Bing)
- Recommendation systems (e.g., Netflix, YouTube)
- Spam and fraud detection: filtering email spam and phishing, detecting credit card fraud and suspicious transactions
- Computer vision: face unlock on phones, medical imaging analysis (e.g., radiology, X-rays)
- Game agents: playing complex games at a professional level (e.g., chess, Go)
- Speech and language tools: speech-to-text, voice assistants, real-time translation, customer support chatbots
AI ≠ Chat agents
Many people use "AI" to mean generative AI tools like ChatGPT, but that's only one small part of AI. These are large language models (LLMs) and similar generative systems: they create text, images, and video based on patterns learnt from data. AI is broader: it includes many techniques that don't generate content at all and may run quietly in the background, making predictions, detecting anomalies, optimising decisions, or recognising images.
The diagram below shows the hierarchy of AI's different areas. AI has many more fields, but we focus on the main ones related to LLMs and ML:
A simplified overview:
- Artificial Intelligence: Methods for intelligent behaviour (includes ML and non-ML approaches).
- Machine Learning (ML): Learns from data to improve performance on tasks.
- Deep Learning: ML using deep neural networks for more applications.
- LLMs: Large transformer-based language models trained on text (and sometimes other data).
Watch: AI vs ML vs Deep Learning vs Gen AI
A great introductory video to understand the history of AI and what is Machine learning, deep learning and LLMs in a very high level.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYNweeDHiyU
What is LLM?
LLM stands for Large Language Model, a type of artificial intelligence system trained on vast amounts of text data to understand and generate human-like language. In HackYourFuture , you'll learn how to use LLMs as tools to assist in your learning.
Watch: LLMs explained briefly
3Blue1Brown offers an excellent explanation of how LLMs work. We hope it will give you more insight into how tools like ChatGPT can answer any question you ask.
<aside>
💭
Around minute 4:30, the video becomes technical about "Transformer models". Don't worry if you don't fully understand all the details.
</aside>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPZh9BOjkQs
AI Tools
Here are some of the most commonly used AI tools across different categories.
Not just ChatGPT
ChatGPT was the first widely available AI chatbot, but many other companies have since launched their own versions. We encourage you to explore different chatbots to find which one works best for you. Here are the current market leaders for high-quality chatbots:
- ChatGPT (by OpenAI): General-purpose chatbot for answering questions, writing, coding assistance, and brainstorming - https://chat.openai.com
- Claude (by Anthropic): AI assistant focused on long-form reasoning and writing, making it very popular among developers for writing high-quality code - https://claude.ai
- Gemini (by Google): Google's AI chatbot integrated with Google services - https://gemini.google.com
- Grok (by xAI): an AI assistant associated with X (Twitter) and positioned around current events and live information, depending on enabled features and access. https://grok.com
- Perplexity: best described as an “answer engine” - optimised for web research and typically returns answers with citations/links, making it handy when you want sources quickly. https://www.perplexity.ai
- Llama (by Meta): Famous for being an open source model. Everyone can download the model and use it for free on your own hardware (Under their license). https://www.llama.com/
Which one is the best?
Measuring the performance of an LLM is very difficult. Experts are actively researching this challenge. Some websites like Stanford's HELM leaderboard and LMArena try to collect statistics, but the task is incredibly difficult.
There is no single best LLM - it depends largely on your preferences and workflows.
<aside>
⌨️
Hands on:
- Open LMArena
- ask a complex question which you know the answer. A good idea is something related to your field of study, a book or movie you know very well or something else
- Look at the answers, pick the one you like and see which model produced the better answer for you.
</aside>
<aside>
💡
We encourage you to try different chatbots and find the one that works best for you.
</aside>
Code Assistance
Image and video Generation
Productivity & Writing
Voice & Audio
Research & Learning
There are many, many more AI tools available across various domains – this list only scratches the surface of what's out there.