Suresh Michael
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AI Foundations

AI and Large Language Models: A Story of Language

A beginner-friendly talk that tells the history of AI as a story about language: from the early dream of intelligent machines, through the attention paper, to agents and where a career in this field starts.

Delivered
October 12, 2025
Format
Talk
Audience
Students & developers new to AI

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Slides

What we covered

The talk is structured as a story rather than a syllabus, because the thing that makes LLMs click for most people is understanding what problem they were the answer to.

  • The early dream of intelligent machines, the chapters that followed, and the plot twist that stalled it.
  • The rise of LLMs, and the paper that turned the corner: "Attention Is All You Need".
  • What a language model is actually doing, built up through examples rather than equations.
  • The classic natural language problems, and how much of that field collapsed into one interface.
  • Prototyping fast: prompting, endpoints, and how little it now takes to try an idea.
  • From words to worlds: generation beyond text, with a live demo.
  • The rise of agents, and what changes when a model is given a job rather than a question.
  • Open source and ethics, and the responsibilities that came with the capability.
  • Writing your own chapter: what a career in AI looks like from the start of it.

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