What is this technology, how did it arrive, and what is actually true about it in 2026 rather than claimed?
11 slides · about 24 minutes · glossary and companies pages included
AI explained for people who are numerate but have no machine-learning background.
Deck version v3.0 · 30 Aug 2026
Chapters are added as the subject moves, so this list grows. Each is one sitting of twenty to thirty minutes. Each chapter is a set of cards — one idea per card. Arrow keys move; every card has a Go deeper block, and an ask box that hands your question to Claude tagged with the card it came from.
The early chapters build on each other, so read them in order the first time. After that they stand alone as reference, and the numbering is for convenience rather than sequence — no chapter is the last one.
Click on the subject lines below to go to the chapters.
What is this technology, how did it arrive, and what is actually true about it in 2026 rather than claimed?
11 slides · about 24 minutes · glossary and companies pages included
What is happening between typing a question and reading an answer — and what is the model actually doing?
10 slides · about 24 minutes · glossary and companies pages included
What physically runs these models, and where is the constraint?
12 slides · about 32 minutes · the fastest-decaying material in the course
If the model is probabilistic, how does anyone build something dependable on top of it?
11 slides · about 28 minutes · the best-sourced chapter in the course
How do you make a general model do your specific job?
13 slides · about 32 minutes · four of them one worked example, end to end
On-premises or hosted — and why do the best-resourced firms mostly rent?
A model is a file · running it on-prem · the economics · the deployment spectrum · what banks actually do
Where does the money go, and which of your habits are expensive?
10 slides · about 25 minutes · prices are point-in-time and will change
The money is being spent — on what, exactly, and who sits at each link?
10 slides · about 28 minutes · the half of the value chain Chapter 3 does not cover
Keep these files together. Each chapter is a separate HTML file in this folder and the links above are relative. Move one on its own and the link breaks — move the folder instead.
Nothing here calls the internet. The cards, diagrams and sources are all inside the files, so they work offline and behind the firewall — and they go stale on their own. Anything dated, check before you rely on it. Chapters 3, 6 and 7 decay fastest.