Your AI Journey Starts Here

What this track covers, how to get the most from the site, and where you can go once you are done — no code and no maths required.

Somewhere today, someone asked an AI to plan a week of school lunches, translate a letter from the bank, or explain why the car is making a funny noise. Maybe it was you. Maybe you have only heard people talk about “ChatGPT” at the mamak and wondered what all the fuss is about. Either way, you are in the right place. This track assumes you know nothing about how AI works — and promises that by the end you will be able to explain it, use it well and spot when it goes wrong.

What this track covers

The Novice track has twelve short pages. Each one takes about ten minutes and stands on its own, but they are designed to be read in order: first what AI is, then how it learns, then how to use it, and finally where it fails and how to stay safe. Open each part to see what it covers.

1What AI actually isPages 1–3

This welcome page; What Is AI, Really?, which untangles a slippery word; and AI, ML, Deep Learning, GenAI, which shows how the buzzwords nest inside one another like Russian dolls.

2How it works, in plain wordsPages 4–5

How Machines Learn explains learning from examples instead of rules. What Is a Large Language Model? opens up the engine behind chat assistants.

3Using it yourselfPages 6–8

Your First Conversation with an AI walks you through choosing an assistant and starting to chat. Prompting Basics teaches you to ask clearly. AI All Around You spots the AI already in your phone, bank, maps and shops.

4Where it goes wrongPages 9–12

What AI Gets Wrong covers made-up answers, bias and stale knowledge. Myths and Misconceptions tackles the big claims. Staying Safe with AI deals with privacy, scams and deepfakes. Novice Checkpoint lets you check yourself before moving on.

By the end you should be able to explain what artificial intelligence, machine learning and a large language model are, in words your parents or children would follow; use an AI chatbot confidently; and recognise a hallucination or a scam before it catches you out.

How to use this site

The site is built to be read on a phone, a little at a time, and it quietly remembers your progress. Nothing you do here is sent anywhere: your progress, highlights and notes are saved only in the browser you are using. (That also means if you switch phones or clear your browser, they will not follow you.)

Tap each tile above to reveal how it works. Two to try right now: tap the dotted word prompt to see the glossary pop-up, and open My Journey to see where your highlights and reflections will collect. The full A-to-Z list of terms is on the Glossary page.

The pages also use small labels such as Consensus and Debated to tell you how settled a claim is. AI is full of confident opinions; the labels help you tell the established facts from the arguments. The labels legend explains each one.

Five tracks, one ladder

The Novice track is the first rung of five. You do not have to climb them all — many people will be very happy stopping after one or two — but each track assumes the one before it.

  1. Novice: Understanding AIYou are here. What AI is and how to use it safely. No code, no maths.
  2. Practitioner: AI at WorkBecome a confident power user for writing, research, data, images and simple automation — still no code.
  3. Builder: Making with AIStart writing small programs in Python and build your own tools on top of AI services.
  4. Advanced: Inside the ModelsThe maths and internals: neural networks, Transformers, training and evaluation.
  5. Expert: The FrontierResearch-level topics: reasoning, interpretability, alignment and the open problems.

Not sure where you belong? The short questionnaire on Choose Your Track suggests a starting point and gives you a checklist for each track.

The parallel story: history

Alongside the tracks runs The Story of AI, a history section that starts with ancient myths of bronze giants and ends with today’s chat assistants. You can read it whenever you like. Many readers find that knowing the history makes the ideas easier: the excitement around AI today has happened before — twice it was followed by an “AI winter” when promises outran results. A good companion to this track is AI History at a Glance, which covers eight decades on one page.

Key point

You do not need to be “good at computers” to understand AI. You need curiosity, a little patience and the willingness to try things. Every expert in this field was once a beginner asking the same questions you are asking now.

Your first tiny exercise

Before you learn anything else, capture what you believe now. At the end of the track you can come back and compare. There are no wrong answers — this is a snapshot, not a test.

// Pause and reflect

  1. In one sentence, what do you think AI is?
  2. Name one place you think you already use AI in daily life — your phone, a map, online shopping, the bank?
  3. What is one thing about AI that excites you, and one thing that worries you?

Your notes are saved privately in this browser.

Try this

Look at the apps on your phone’s home screen. For each one, guess whether it uses AI somewhere (suggestions, photo sorting, voice, recommendations, fraud checks). Write your count in the box above. When you reach AI All Around You, see whether you guessed high or low.

Key terms on this page

Sources & further reading