Artificial Intelligence · Free Course

Artificial Intelligence, made painless

A complete, free AI course explained the way you wish your lecturer had, with an interactive animation on every topic. Start as a total beginner or dive into the full curriculum.

14 topics Interactive Free to read, always

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I am a complete beginner

No coding, no maths, no jargon. Start here to understand what AI is and how tools like ChatGPT actually work, from zero.

Start the beginner path

I am taking the AI course

Syllabus-mapped notes for university students: deep explanations, worked examples, and exam-style questions across all 14 topics.

Jump to the curriculum

Fourteen topics, ordered so each builds on the last. Every page includes a live, interactive demo you can play with.

Foundations and search

1IntroductionAgents, environments, and the search problem. 2Uninformed SearchBFS, DFS, iterative deepening, and uniform cost. 3Informed SearchHeuristics, greedy best-first, and A star. 4Adversarial SearchMinimax and alpha-beta pruning for games. 5Local SearchHill climbing and simulated annealing.

Nature-inspired optimisation

6Evolutionary AlgorithmsGenetic algorithms: selection, crossover, mutation. 7Swarm IntelligenceBoids, particle swarm, and ant colony optimization.

Constraints, learning, and reasoning

8Constraint SatisfactionVariables, constraints, and backtracking search. 9Cluster Analysisk-means and hierarchical clustering. 10Decision TreesEntropy, information gain, and ID3. 11Performance MeasuresConfusion matrix, precision, recall, and ROC. 12Neural NetworksNeurons, layers, and backpropagation. 13OntologiesSemantic networks, RDF triples, and inference. 14Probabilistic ReasoningBayes theorem and Bayesian networks.

Go deeper

How transformers work Coming soon

A free, plain-language explainer of the architecture behind ChatGPT: tokens, embeddings, and attention.

The Painless AI Handbook Coming soon

The deep-dive: transformers and generative AI in full, how to build with AI models, plus the whole course offline.

Part of Painless Programming · clear notes on Python, C++, computer science, and AI.