AI Foundations — The Fundamentals: Understanding Modern AI (Udemy.com)

AI is becoming part of everyday work, but for many people, it still feels confusing, overhyped, or intimidating.

You may have tried ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or other AI tools and seen what they can do. But once people start talking about large language models, tokens, context windows, parameters, AI agents, or “artificial intelligence” as if it were actually thinking, it can be hard to separate practical reality from buzzwords.

This course solves that problem.

AI Foundations gives you a clear, beginner-friendly introduction to modern AI, generative AI, and large language models without requiring coding, math, or machine learning experience. It is not an AI engineering course. It is a practical AI literacy course for anyone who wants to understand and use AI more effectively in business, learning, writing, research, productivity, and daily life.

What you’ll learn

In this course, you’ll learn how to:

• Understand what artificial intelligence means in practical terms

• Explain how generative AI and large language models like ChatGPT work at a high level

• Make sense of terms like tokens, parameters, context windows, and temperature

• Recognize why AI can sound intelligent while still being confidently wrong

• Separate real AI capabilities from myths, hype, and marketing

• Understand AI limitations, hallucinations, privacy concerns, and responsible use

• Use AI tools for writing, research, learning, planning, brainstorming, and productivity

• Improve results with better prompts and iterative prompting

• Compare popular AI tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Llama, DeepSeek, and Qwen

• Build simple AI workflows you can apply to real-world tasks

  
  

Who this course is for

This course is for beginners, business professionals, students, educators, managers, creators, and everyday users who want a practical understanding of AI.

It is a good fit if you want to:

• Learn AI fundamentals without becoming an AI engineer

• Understand how ChatGPT and other AI assistants work

• Use AI more effectively at work or in your personal life

• Build AI literacy for business, productivity, or future learning

• Gain a foundation before moving into more advanced AI topics

No programming experience is required.

About the instructors

Your main instructor is Károly Nyisztor, a software engineer, instructor, and author with over 30 years of experience. Károly has taught more than 400,000 students worldwide, holds 12 patents in software architecture and mobile computing, and has worked with companies including Siemens, SAP, and Apple.

The course is co-instructed by Frank Kane, founder of Sundog Education. Frank spent nine years at Amazon and IMDb as a senior engineer and senior manager, holds 26 issued patents in AI, machine learning, and related technologies, and has taught technology courses to more than one million students worldwide.

Build your AI foundation

Modern AI does not have to feel mysterious.

By the end of this course, you’ll understand what AI is, what it is not, where it works well, where it falls short, and how to use tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini with more confidence and better results.