Foundations: what AI actually is

Our first level — the Monday evening session — is all about laying a calm, solid foundation. By the end, the word "AI" will feel a lot less mysterious, and you'll understand the story of how we arrived at this moment.

Here's what we cover across the three hours, hour by hour.

Hour one — A short history of AI

We begin with the story, because everything makes more sense once you know where it came from. AI isn't new — the dream is over seventy years old. We'll trace the journey from the earliest "thinking machines" and rule-based systems of the 1950s, through the long quiet decades, to the sudden leap of the last few years.

You'll see that today's AI didn't appear from nowhere. It's the result of three things arriving at once: enormous amounts of data, powerful computers, and a clever new approach to learning. Understanding that arc takes the magic — and the fear — out of it. It becomes a human story of invention, not a mysterious force.

Hour two — What an AI model really is

Next, we open the box. What is a "model," really? What's an "LLM," the thing behind tools like ChatGPT?

In plain English: a large language model is a program that has read an extraordinary amount of text, and learned the patterns in how we write. When you ask it something, it predicts a helpful response one word at a time, based on those patterns. That's it. It isn't looking things up in a database, and it isn't thinking or feeling. We'll use simple, everyday analogies — no mathematics required — so this genuinely clicks into place.

Once you understand that it's a very capable pattern machine, everything else starts to make sense.

Hour three — What it's good at (and what it isn't)

Finally, we get practical and honest. What is this technology actually good at, and where does it fall down?

We'll cover the genuine strengths — explaining things simply, drafting and summarising, brainstorming, answering questions patiently — and the real weaknesses, like confidently making things up (we'll explain the odd term "hallucination"), and not always being up to date. Knowing both sides is what turns nervousness into confident, sensible use.

You'll leave the Foundations session understanding what AI is, where it came from, and what it can realistically do for you — the perfect grounding for everything that follows.