Learn AI for free: five videos to watch in order

You don't need a paid course to learn AI. Five free videos, watched in the right order, get you from "what is a neural network" to building your own GPT in code.

The order is the point. Each one assumes a little of what the last one gave you.

Start with intuition, then get hands-on

1. 3Blue1Brown on what a neural network is. This is the best visual intuition to start with. Before you write anything, you want a picture in your head of what the thing is doing. This video gives you that picture.

2. freeCodeCamp's machine learning course. Hands-on basics in one sitting. Once you have the picture, this is where you start working with the ideas directly instead of only watching them drawn.

3. MIT 6.S191, Introduction to Deep Learning. A real university course, for free. By this point you have the intuition and the basics, so a proper course won't feel like it's talking over your head. It's the step that gives you the formal footing.

Then build it yourself

The last two are both by Andrej Karpathy, and both are about writing code rather than only watching someone explain it.

4. Building micrograd from scratch. You write a tiny neural net and backprop yourself. Backprop is easy to nod along to and hard to explain until you've typed it out. Doing it at small scale makes it concrete.

5. Let's build GPT. You build your own GPT in code. It comes last because it leans on everything before it. If the micrograd video made sense, this one is the same habit applied to something bigger.

Why this order works

Going from visual intuition, to hands-on basics, to a university course, to two builds moves you from seeing, to using, to understanding, to making. Skip to the GPT build first and you'll likely be copying code you can't read yet. Start with the visuals and the code has something to attach to.

The sequence also keeps the cost at zero. Every step is a free video, so the only thing you're spending is time.

What to do with it

Pick a day this week and watch the first one. Then take the next in order, and don't jump ahead to the Karpathy builds because they look the most fun. When you reach micrograd and the GPT video, follow along in your own editor and write the code as you go.

If you're not sure where you stand, the question from the reel is a good one to answer honestly. Which one are you starting with? If the answer is anything past the first, go back and watch the 3Blue1Brown video anyway. It's the cheapest step in the list.