Project Explained: awesome-free-ai-course-notes

What it is

A hand-picked, public list pointing to official, written, and free course notes on artificial intelligence and machine learning, published by universities or professors themselves. It is maintained by Marcos Cruz.

What it does

The list collects links to actual prose notes — like textbook chapters — that certain university courses publish openly. It only includes material that could reasonably replace a paid textbook for studying AI/ML topics.

Why it exists

Many university courses assign a paid textbook, or only share slide decks, or keep materials behind a student login. The author wanted to track the rare exception: instructors who publish complete, written notes for free, with no login and no paywall.

It is a companion to a similar project, “Awesome Free AI Books,” but focuses on a much rarer resource type — instructor-published lecture notes rather than whole books.

What qualifies for the list

An entry must meet all three of these rules:

1. Written prose notes — not slide decks, not videos, not recorded lectures. If it reads like a textbook chapter, it qualifies.
2. Official — published by the professor, the course, or the department itself.
3. Free and permanent — no login, no institutional email required, no paywall.

Because of these strict rules, the list is short on purpose. The README says several universities were checked and did not qualify (e.g., Yale, Carnegie Mellon, Cambridge, Tsinghua, IIT Bombay) — mostly because their materials are slides/video-only or sit behind a login.

What the list looks like

The entries are organized by country, then by university. Each entry names the university, the course, the instructor(s) (when known), and links to the notes. As of the README, qualifying entries exist for:

• United States (MIT, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Caltech, Cornell)
• England (Oxford)
• Germany (LMU Munich)
• Singapore (National University of Singapore)
• South Korea (KAIST)
• Brazil (USP)

There is also a clearly labeled section of universities that were checked but have no qualifying entry yet — this transparency prevents people from re-suggesting places already ruled out.

Key details

• This is an index, not a host. The repository contains only links and descriptions; it does not store any course files. If a link breaks, users are asked to open an issue.
• Maintenance: An automated link-check workflow runs on the repository to detect broken links.
• How to contribute: Contributors must read the contribution guidelines first. Rules include: one entry per pull request, link to the primary source (the professor’s or course’s own page), and arrange entries alphabetically by country then university.
• License: The repository itself is released under the CC0 1.0 license (public domain dedication).

In one sentence

A small, carefully curated directory of official, free, written university notes that can serve as a substitute for a machine-learning textbook.