Resources to help you learn to use LLMs & AI

Want to learn more about using large language models? Here are some excellent tips and resources.

Which LLM should you use?

There are so many options! If you want to become good at prompting I would suggest you use several models. If you can afford it, I’d recommend paid subscriptions to each of the following:

• ChatGPT Plus: $20 USD / month. You’ll get 5x more prompts than the free version. The free version has access to GPT-4o mini. The paid version also gives you access to the new early versions of “strawberry”, o1-preview and o1-mini which are good for reasoning through tasks. The paid version allows for file uploads, data analysis and web browsing. You can also create GPT’s which are like little personal agents that are quite helpful.
• Gemini Advanced: $20 USD / month. Gemini Advanced uses a more advanced AI model than the free version. You also get access to Gemini in Gmail and Google docs. However, you can get access to the most advanced version of Gemini for free by using Gemini in AI Studio. 
• Grok (X / Twitter). Grok used to be $8 USD / month with a Premium X account, but is now free for all to use. Grok is getting better and better and because it has access to real time data on X, it is good for learning about things that are happening in real time.

There are many other AI tools including Claude, Meta AI and Perplexity that are worth checking out as well.

Which LLMs do I use?

If I had to choose just one LLM to use what would it be? To me the choice is easy!

You Know AIMarie Haynes

Should you be polite to LLMs?

Is there any benefit to being nice to language models? Research says there is!

You Know AIMarie Haynes

Learn to use LLMs

The best skill you can learn is to become good at prompting language models. I’ll list some courses you can take below, but really, you can learn by asking the models to teach you!

Try these prompts:

Create a tutorial to help me learn how to use [ChatGPT / Gemini / Grok]. Give me just one question at a time.

Teach me how to use [ChatGPT / Gemini / Grok] to learn a new topic or skill.

I’m new to [ChatGPT / Gemini / Grok]. What should I know?]

Provide a step by step guide on troubleshooting unsatisfactory responses from [ChatGPT / Gemini / Grok]

If you’re not happy with how the conversation is going, simply “talk” to it like a human. For example, “That’s not really the response I was looking for. Can you give me a more simple explanation?” If the conversation gets really frustrating, it can help to start over with a new one.

Understanding more about how AI works

A Beginner’s Guide to Understanding the Development of Conversational AI

How wild is it that we have learned to communicate with machines in natural language? I recently watched this talk by Jeff Dean and learned so much about the progression of AI in this area and was inspired to write this article.

You Know AIMarie Haynes

Podcast: Gemini 2.0 - a new era! O1, Google’s quantum computing breakthrough, Sora & more

Finally, a new podcast episode. There is SO MUCH to talk about in regards to AI. Buckle up for a thrilling dive into the future of AI! This episode of Search (and AI) News You Can Use uncovers the mind-blowing advancements in AI, from Google’s Gemini 2.0 and its

You Know AIMarie Haynes

The Future

AI will change our civilization in ways we cannot currently comprehend!

The AI Scientist: Towards Fully Automated Open-Ended Scientific Discovery

The AI scientist proposed in this paper can generate research ideas, execute experiments, analyze results, write scientific papers and perform self peer review. This has profound implications for the progression of science!

You Know AIMarie Haynes

Sundar Pichai says Search will change profoundly in 2025

Here are my notes on everything Sundar Pichai said at the NYT BookDeal Summit.

You Know AIMarie Haynes

Agents Thinking Fast and Slow: A Talker-Reasoner Architecture - DeepMind research paper

In this paper DeepMind presents a new architecture for AI agents based on the concept of “thinking fast and slow.”

You Know AIMarie Haynes

Free resources

OpenAI’s guide to prompt engineering

Google’s guide to prompt engineering

Google's 5 day intensive Generative AI course - I highly recommend this!

Paid resources

My book: Learn to use Bard

The prompts are written for Bard which is the early version of Gemini, but these can be used with any language model. Play pictionary, create recipes and more.

Learn to Use Bard: Prompts and Games to try to up your skills

Google prompting essentials

https://www.coursera.org/google-learn/prompting-essentials 

Cost: $66 via Coursera

Time: 9 hours

This beginner level course teaches you to design prompts and iterate on them to improve. It will help you learn how to work with data and create visualizations. You’ll also learn how to create AI agents.

This resource list is just getting started. I’ll post more to it as I find great resources.