microsoft/AI-For-Beginners

What is this project?

AI-For-Beginners is a free, open-source curriculum from Microsoft that teaches the fundamentals of Artificial Intelligence (AI). It's designed for beginners and spans 12 weeks with 24 lessons. Each lesson includes practical exercises, quizzes, and labs, and uses popular AI tools like TensorFlow and PyTorch.

What does it cover?

The curriculum covers a wide range of AI topics, including:

Classic symbolic AI – knowledge representation and reasoning.
Neural networks and deep learning – the core of modern AI, with code examples in TensorFlow and PyTorch.
Neural architectures for images and text – like convolutional networks and transformers.
Other AI techniques – genetic algorithms, deep reinforcement learning, and multi-agent systems.
AI ethics – a dedicated lesson on responsible AI.

It also includes a mindmap of the course and links to additional Microsoft Learn resources.

What it does not cover

The README explicitly lists topics that are not part of this curriculum, such as:

Business use cases of AI (pointing to other Microsoft Learn paths).
Classic machine learning (covered in a separate curriculum).
Practical AI applications using Azure Cognitive Services.
Specific cloud frameworks like Azure Machine Learning or Databricks.
Conversational AI and chatbots.
Deep mathematics behind deep learning (recommends a textbook).

How is it structured?

The content is organized into sections (I–VII) and lessons (0–24). Each lesson has a README, and many include Jupyter notebooks (PyTorch, TensorFlow, or Keras) and labs. The table of contents in the README lists every lesson with links to its materials.

Languages and translations

The project is available in 50+ languages via automated translations. The README includes a table of language links and instructions for cloning the repo without translations to reduce download size.

Community and contributions

The project welcomes contributions – fixing typos, improving docs, or adding examples. There’s a CONTRIBUTING.md guide. The community can also join via a Discord server (Microsoft Foundry) and a Gitter chat.

How to get started

You can clone the repository (with or without translations) and follow the course setup lesson. The README also provides a link to a Binder environment to run notebooks online without local setup.

Key facts from the README

License: MIT (from the badge).
Contributors: Many (badge shows contributors).
Issues and PRs: Open and welcome (badges).
Stars/forks: Social badges indicate popularity.

This is a beginner-friendly, hands-on, and community-supported way to learn AI from scratch.