With each passing year AI tools inch ever closer to the ultimate goal of artificial general intelligence — the term used to refer to AI that can learn and respond much like a human under a wide variety of situations. These advances were made possible by four developments:

1. The artificial neuron and it’s training method
2. Large curated data sets for training
3. Novel neural network models
4. Computer hardware capable of accelerating the computations present in neural networks

The course introduces some of the key ideas behind developments 1, 2, and 3. It provides high school students with a foundation to think about the recent developments in AI and how it can be leveraged to solve the problems of today and tomorrow. The course is intended as a non-technical introduction, and is accessible to the layperson without any deep background in programming or advanced mathematics.