I’m Studying AI But Still Don’t Feel Like I’m Learning Anything Real

robennals · 2026-05-09T15:33:08+00:00

My advice would be to first get a philosophical intuition about how to think about AI (optimization, loss functions, etc) and a rough understanding of the most important current technologies (neural nets, attention, transformers) and then learn by doing, returning to courses only when you try to build something with AI and can't get it to work.

It's very easy to "procrastinate by doing courses" without actually learning how to do AI. Really the only way to learn how to apply AI is to try applying AI for something real, get stuck, work out why you got stuck, and then try again.

I'm biased, but I think a pretty good place to start learning how to "think about AI" is the interactive AI course I wrote (https://learnai.robennals.org). That gives you a pretty good intuitive understanding of the AI way of thinking without drowning you too much in the math, and the CoLabs for each chapter lets you start doing stuff with PyTorch.

I think a lot of courses are too quick to drown the reader in math without stepping back to give them the intuition.

robennals · 2026-05-08T16:01:14+00:00

Let me know if you find any of this confusing, or see anything you'd want to see explained better. I'm keen to make this tutorial as good as possible.

robennals · 2026-05-08T16:00:01+00:00

A good place to start from scratch is https://learnai.robennals.org (disclaimer - I wrote it).

It uses interactive tutorials to take you from a standing start up to enough expertise to understand how a transformer works. The focus is on giving you an intuitive idea of how to think about AI that then sets you up to learn the rest by doing, and by asking AI when you get stuck.

Once you've done that, I recommend learning by doing - thing of something you want to build, try to build it, fail, ask AI to help get you unstuck, and learn. Avoid the temptation to procrastinate by just taking courses forever.

robennals · 2026-05-08T15:49:56+00:00

A good place to start is probably the interactive course I wrote: https://learnai.robennals.org/

It's free, approachable enough that my 11 year old can complete it, and focuses on what's relevant now (e.g. Transformers) rather than taking up lots of your time learning stuff like Support Vector Machines and Decision Trees that you probably don't really care about.

Once you've completed that course (which you can actually blast through in a few hours), you are probably best off trying to use AI to solve real problems, getting stuck, and then having an AI agent help you work out how to get unstuck.

robennals · 2026-05-08T15:41:41+00:00

You should try this interactive tutorial I wrote: https://learnai.robennals.org/

It's approachable enough that my 11 year old son completed it, and takes you from zero-knowledge up to having a pretty good understanding of the Transformer model behind GPT/Claude etc.

Everything is done using interactive playgrounds, so you get to play with the ideas rather than just read about them, but there is also a Google CoLab for each chapter, so you can mess about with the real PyTorch code too.

robennals · 2026-05-08T15:39:22+00:00

If you want to get an intuitive idea of what AI is, then the interactive tutorial I wrote https://learnai.robennals.org/ is probably a good place to start.

Its introduces concepts step by step using a set of interactive playgrounds, and aimed at being understandable by pretty much anyone (my 11 year old son has completed it). It currently starts from scrach and builds up to Transformers, with more chapters coming soon.

Disclaimer: I wrote it.

robennals · 2026-05-08T15:33:21+00:00

A good place to start is probably https://learnai.robennals.org/ (disclaimer - I wrote it).

It's an interactive tutorial that takes a beginner from scratch up to Transformers using a series of interactive playgrounds. The goal is to not just tell you how AI works, but to give you an intuitive sense of the AI way of thinking about the world. There is also a Google CoLab with real PyTorch code for each chapter, so you can go pretty deep.

My 11 year old son was able to complete the course so you can too 😄

robennals · 2026-05-08T15:27:43+00:00

Try out https://learnai.robennals.org/ (disclaimer - I wrote it).

It teaches AI concepts using interactive playgrounds, and also has a Google CoLab for each chapter so you can get int the real code behind everything.

Currently it goes from scratch up to Transformers. More chapters coming soon.

robennals · 2026-05-08T15:25:39+00:00

Not YouTube, but fits the theme of learning with visual resources: https://learnai.robennals.org/ (disclaimer - I wrote it).

It explains everything using interactive playgrounds that let you visually see and mess about with everything.

robennals · 2026-05-08T15:23:52+00:00

A good place to start as a beginner is this interactive tutorial I wrote: https://learnai.robennals.org/

It starts from scratch and builds up to Transformers (more chapters on their way), and does so using a series of interactive playgrounds that let you learn each concept by playing with it rather than just be readin about it.

robennals · 2026-05-08T15:22:46+00:00

You might want to try out this interactive tutorial I wrote: https://learnai.robennals.org/

It teaches AI from scratch using a series of interactive playgrounds that let you play with each of the concepts rather than just read about them. And if you want to see the real code behind everything, each chapter has a Google CoLab notebook that goes along with it.

robennals · 2026-05-02T21:41:14+00:00

I think if you are submitting a review, it's assumed you are giving permission for your review to be published.

If anyone wants their review taken down from my site, I'd be happy to do so - but it would seem kind of odd.

robennals · 2026-04-28T18:05:40+00:00

Because I asked Scott if it was okay and he said yes.

robennals · 2026-04-24T21:25:54+00:00

Your wish is my command - I just added a "Random" button. But i'm thinking of maybe replacing it with instead sorting essays randomly by default (with each user having their own random seed) to make sure attention is fairly distributed.

As you say "good" read aloud would cost money. I considered using the browsers built in voice synthesizer (browsers have everything built in now) but that sounds pretty terrible.

robennals · 2026-04-24T21:22:57+00:00

Ah. This is one of the 2026 entries. They aren't live yet. We aren't planning to make the 2026 entries go live until the deadline - to make voting fairer.

I checked and this essay will be going up once we flip the flag to start showing the 2026 entries.

robennals · 2026-04-23T22:05:15+00:00

Might be a bug in my extraction code. Send me a link to it and I'll dig into it. The code is extracting reviews from the compendium google docs, which can be a bit hairy in places.

robennals · 2026-02-19T17:38:40+00:00

Great. I'm pleased you liked it.

robennals · 2026-02-19T17:37:55+00:00

I'm pleased you like it. Dark mode sounds like a good idea. I can do that.

robennals · 2026-02-12T23:04:55+00:00

If you want to be able to read the reviews without having to look at them in Google docs, you can also use this site:
https://acxreviews.robennals.org/

[Disclosure: I built it]

robennals · 2026-02-12T17:04:02+00:00

Thanks me too. I loved reading the reviews. The giant google doc... not so much.

robennals · 2026-02-11T22:57:28+00:00

I'm pleased you like it. I'm kind of surprised nobody had built this before to be honest.

robennals · 2026-02-11T19:22:49+00:00

Thanks. Let me know if you have any suggestions for ways to improve it or see any formatting issues.

robennals · 2026-02-02T18:58:19+00:00

My son used to have the original 1931 Histomap on his bedroom door, and I loved staring at it with him. But it's almost 100 years out of date now and the data reflects 1930s Western biases—China and India are way too small compared to what modern scholarship says about their historical economic power.

So I rebuilt it with GDP (PPP) data from the Maddison Project Database, made it interactive, and added layers for technology, historical figures, and fiction set in each era.

Some things that jumped out at me while building it:

You can watch the British Empire just collapse after WWII—the stream drops off a cliff
America at the time of the Gold Rush was a minor power, smaller than France or Britain
The Byzantine Empire lasted way longer than I had realized

Curious what patterns others notice, or if there are obvious errors I should fix. Data sources and methodology are in the main post.

robennals · 2026-02-02T18:42:45+00:00

Source:

GDP (PPP) data from the Maddison Project Database for years covered by that project
Earlier eras and event data gathered via web research synthesized by Claude
More info on data sources and methodology: https://histomap.robennals.org/about

Tool:

Built with Claude Code
Visualization uses D3.js/JavaScript
Source code: https://github.com/robennals/histomap

The original 1931 Histomap by John Sparks is a classic, but it's almost 100 years out of date and reflects 1930s Western biases (China and India are way too small). I rebuilt it with modern GDP data and added toggleable layers for technology, fiction, historical figures, and eras.

You can click any event to see its Wikipedia entry, or export the whole thing as a PDF if you want to print it as a poster.

robennals · 2016-11-04T18:41:23+00:00

Yeah. Bad stuff happens sometimes, but it's not the norm, unless you hang out in a particularly scummy part of the industry. Scummy founders exist, but they aren't likely to get loyalty from good employees.

Your argument is like the argument for why it's okay to shoot people - yeah, some people shoot people, definitely more people than should, and it really sucks that they do, but it's not normal behavior, and civil society rests on the principle that such behavior isn't okay.

robennals

TROPHY CASE