AI Canon

A curated collection of essential AI learning resources. From gentle introductions to cutting-edge research, everything you need to understand modern artificial intelligence.

This collection is inspired by and includes resources from the a16z AI Canon, curated by Andreessen Horowitz. We've enhanced it with progress tracking, AI-powered learning assistance, and improved discoverability to help you master AI.

Showing 41 of 41 resources

Gentle Introduction

Software 2.0
article
beginner
10 min

AI is a new and powerful way to program computers. This foundational article introduces the concept that neural networks are a different kind of programming paradigm.

By Andrej KarpathyMedium
State of GPT
video
beginner
45 min

Approachable explanation of how ChatGPT and GPT models work, how to use them, and where research and development is headed.

By Andrej KarpathyMicrosoft Build
What is ChatGPT doing … and why does it work?
article
beginner
60 min

Long but highly readable explanation of modern AI from first principles. Wolfram breaks down the mechanics of language models in an accessible way.

By Stephen WolframWolfram
Transformers, explained
article
beginner
15 min

Direct introduction to large language models with intuitive explanations of how transformer architecture works.

By Dale MarkowitzDale on AI
How Stable Diffusion works
article
beginner
20 min

A layperson's guide to text-to-image models. Explains the mechanics of Stable Diffusion in an approachable way.

By Chris McCormickMcCormick ML

Foundational Learning

Deep learning in a nutshell: core concepts
article
intermediate
90 min

Four-part series covering deep learning fundamentals including neural networks, training, and optimization.

By NvidiaNvidia Developer Blog
Practical deep learning for coders
course
intermediate
600 min

Comprehensive, free course teaching practical deep learning with code examples. Designed for developers who want to build real applications.

By Jeremy HowardFast.ai
Word2vec explained
article
intermediate
15 min

Introduction to embeddings and how words are represented as vectors in large language models.

Towards Data Science
Yes you should understand backprop
article
intermediate
30 min

In-depth explanation of backpropagation fundamentals. Essential for understanding how neural networks learn.

By Andrej KarpathyMedium
Stanford CS229: Machine Learning
course
intermediate
1200 min

Introduction to machine learning course covering supervised and unsupervised learning, best practices, and real-world applications.

By Andrew NgStanford University
Stanford CS224N: NLP with Deep Learning
course
intermediate
1200 min

Natural language processing course covering modern deep learning approaches to understanding and generating text.

By Chris ManningStanford University

Technical Deep Dive

The illustrated transformer
article
advanced
45 min

Technical overview of transformer architecture with visual explanations. Essential reading for understanding modern LLMs.

By Jay AlammarJay Alammar Blog
The annotated transformer
article
advanced
120 min

Source code level understanding of transformers with PyTorch implementation. Line-by-line breakdown of the architecture.

By Harvard NLPHarvard University
Let's build GPT: from scratch, in code, spelled out
video
advanced
150 min

Video walkthrough building GPT from scratch. Learn by implementing a character-level language model.

By Andrej KarpathyYouTube
The illustrated Stable Diffusion
article
advanced
45 min

Introduction to latent diffusion models with visual explanations of how Stable Diffusion generates images.

By Jay AlammarJay Alammar Blog
RLHF: Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback
article
advanced
30 min

Explanation of RLHF and how it makes large language models more predictable and aligned with human preferences.

By Chip HuyenChip Huyen Blog
Reinforcement learning from human feedback
video
advanced
60 min

Deep dive on RLHF state, progress, and limitations from one of the technique's pioneers.

By John SchulmanYouTube
Stanford CS25: Transformers United
course
advanced
600 min

Seminar series on transformers covering recent advances and applications across different domains.

By StanfordStanford University
Stanford CS324: Large Language Models
course
advanced
900 min

Course covering both technical and non-technical aspects of large language models including capabilities, limitations, and societal impact.

By Percy Liang, Tatsu Hashimoto, Chris ReStanford University

Practical Building

Build a GitHub support bot with GPT3, LangChain, and Python
article
intermediate
45 min

Early explanation of modern LLM application stack. Tutorial for building a practical chatbot application.

Dagster
Building LLM applications for production
article
intermediate
40 min

Key challenges in building production LLM applications including evaluation, monitoring, and deployment.

By Chip HuyenChip Huyen Blog

article

article
intermediate
120 min

The most comprehensive guide to prompt engineering with model-specific examples and best practices.

PromptingGuide.ai
Brex's prompt engineering guide
article
intermediate
30 min

Conversational treatment of prompt engineering with practical examples from production use.

By BrexGitHub
Prompt injection: What's the worst that can happen?
article
intermediate
15 min

Security vulnerability description in LLM applications. Essential reading for building secure AI systems.

By Simon WillisonSimon Willison Blog
OpenAI cookbook
tool
intermediate
300 min

Definitive collection of guides and code examples for building with OpenAI models.

By OpenAIGitHub
Pinecone learning center
article
intermediate
180 min

Vector search paradigm instruction covering embeddings, similarity search, and vector databases.

Pinecone
LangChain documentation
tool
intermediate
240 min

LLM orchestration layer and full stack reference for building complex AI applications.

LangChain
LLM Bootcamp
course
intermediate
480 min

Practical course for building LLM applications covering the full stack from prompts to production.

By Charles Frye, Sergey Karayev, Josh TobinFull Stack Deep Learning
Hugging Face Transformers course
course
intermediate
300 min

Guide to using open-source LLMs in the transformers library with practical examples.

Hugging Face

Market Analysis

Who owns the generative AI platform?
article
intermediate
25 min

Value accrual assessment across AI layers from infrastructure to applications.

a16z
Navigating the high cost of AI compute
article
intermediate
20 min

GPU acquisition and computing resource strategy for AI companies.

a16z
Generative AI: The next consumer platform
article
intermediate
30 min

Consumer market opportunities across sectors from content creation to personal productivity.

a16z
On the opportunities and risks of foundation models
paper
intermediate
180 min

Overview paper that shaped the "foundation models" terminology and framework.

By Bommasani et al.Stanford
State of AI Report
article
intermediate
120 min

Annual roundup of breakthroughs, industry developments, regulation, and economics in AI.

State of AI

Landmark Research

Attention is all you need
paper
advanced
120 min

The original transformer paper that revolutionized AI. Introduced the attention mechanism and transformer architecture.

By Vaswani et al.Google Brain
BERT: Pre-training of deep bidirectional transformers
paper
advanced
90 min

First publicly available large language model with many active variants still in use today.

By Devlin et al.Google

paper

paper
advanced
90 min

First GPT architecture paper introducing the generative pre-training approach.

By Radford et al.OpenAI
Language models are few-shot learners
paper
advanced
120 min

GPT-3 paper describing decoder-only architecture and demonstrating few-shot learning capabilities.

By Brown et al.OpenAI
Training language models to follow instructions with human feedback
paper
advanced
90 min

InstructGPT paper introducing human-in-the-loop training for instruction following.

By Ouyang et al.OpenAI
GPT-4 technical report
paper
advanced
120 min

Latest OpenAI model technical specifications and capabilities evaluation.

By OpenAIOpenAI
LLaMA: Open and efficient foundation language models
paper
advanced
90 min

Competitive open-source model demonstrating that smaller models can achieve strong performance.

By Touvron et al.Meta

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