Intermediate Free New 6 modules · Capstone · ~4.5 hrs

Think Like an AI Researcher

You do not need a PhD to interrogate AI claims. You need a method. This course teaches enterprise practitioners how to read papers, spot benchmark manipulation, design internal studies, and translate research findings into board-ready decisions.

Start Module 1 → See all modules
Is this course for me?
This IS for you if...
  • You commission or review AI evaluations but did not design them yourself
  • You read vendor benchmark claims and cannot tell what is real
  • You manage a team that produces AI research and want to know if they did it right
  • You need to present AI evidence to a board or audit committee
  • You are a CTO, Chief AI Officer, CIO, or VP of Product in an AI-heavy org
This is NOT for you if...
  • You want to publish academic ML research (wrong course)
  • You are learning to train or fine-tune models (see Fine-Tuning LLMs)
  • You are a complete beginner with no AI exposure (start with What Is a Model)
  • You want to learn to run benchmarks in code (see Evaluating AI Models)
Prerequisites
ⓘ
You should be comfortable with what a language model does and what "training" means. No statistics background required. If you have taken Evaluating AI Models or Enterprise AI, you are well prepared. If not, Module 1 starts from scratch.
What you will be able to do
✓Read an AI paper and identify what the authors actually proved vs. what they implied
✓Spot the five most common benchmark manipulation techniques vendors use
✓Design a valid internal AI evaluation from scratch, including sample size and controls
✓Interrogate a team's AI research and know if they did it correctly
✓Translate a paper's findings into a board-ready decision brief
✓Run a vendor AI evaluation session and ask the questions that reveal real capability
Modules
01
How to Read an AI Paper
The anatomy of a research paper. Where to start, what to skip, and what the abstract is hiding. How to find the real claim in 10 minutes.
Read time: 14 min
→
02
Benchmarks: What They Actually Measure
MMLU, HumanEval, HELM, GSM8K. What each benchmark tests, what it cannot test, and why a model can top every leaderboard and still fail in your org.
Read time: 13 min
→
03
How Benchmarks Get Gamed
Data contamination, task overfitting, cherry-picked splits, selective reporting, and the moving goalposts problem. Five patterns to detect before you trust a number.
Read time: 15 min
→
04
Designing Your Own AI Study
How to design a valid internal AI evaluation. What makes a sample size defensible. Confounders, controls, and how to avoid the trap of measuring what is easy instead of what matters.
Read time: 16 min
→
05
Commissioning AI Research from a Team
How to write a research brief, what deliverables to require, and the ten questions that reveal whether your team or vendor actually ran a valid study. For leaders who do not run studies themselves.
Read time: 13 min
→
06
From Research Findings to Enterprise Decisions
How to translate a research result into a board-ready decision brief. The four questions every executive must answer before acting on AI evidence. How to communicate uncertainty without losing credibility.
Read time: 14 min
→
CA
Capstone: Audit a Real AI Claim
Apply everything in one session. You receive a real vendor AI benchmark report. You audit it using the course framework and produce a one-page findings brief.
Read time: 20 min
→

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