What AI actually is (and isn't) — companion videos

3Blue1Brown

The cleanest eight-minute mental model of an LLM on YouTube. Grant Sanderson walks through "next-word prediction," parameters, training, and reinforcement learning from human feedback without ever drifting into hype. Watch it right after the article and the phrase "AI is just autocomplete on steroids" stops being a slogan and starts being a useful shorthand.

What you should get from this: You can explain in plain words how an LLM predicts the next token and why calling it autocomplete on steroids is fair but incomplete.

Watch or know first: None — watchable cold.

Stanford Online

Andrew Ng, one of the people who actually built the field, talking plainly about what AI is good at, what it isn't, and where the realistic opportunities sit. A useful counterweight to social-media takes — same calm, no-hype tone as the article, just with more depth on the "where is this actually going" question.

What you should get from this: You leave with a realistic sense of what AI is good at today, where it falls short, and which opportunities are worth taking seriously.

Watch or know first: None — watchable cold, though it lands better after the primary pick's eight-minute mental model.