10-202: Introduction to Modern AI
Hacker News
March 1, 2026
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.
[Note]
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.
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.
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Originally published on Hacker News on 3/1/2026