Foundations of AI

Building a clear understanding of the fundamental concepts behind modern AI systems.

Perceptrons

Part 1 of 3 in Foundations of AI

An overview of the Perceptron and its influence on modern neural networks.

— Written 28 July 2025 · Edited 28 March 2026 · Written by Benjamin Clark

Activation Functions

Part 2 of 3 in Foundations of AI

Why activation functions exist, how the common ones differ, and which I'd reach for — with a Python demo showing the effect of swapping activation functions on a small network.

— Written 05 August 2025 · Edited 27 March 2026 · Written by Benjamin Clark

Multi-layer Perceptrons and Backpropagation

Part 3 of 3 in Foundations of AI

How stacking non-linear layers solves XOR, what loss and gradient descent actually do, and a from-scratch NumPy implementation of backpropagation.

— Written 28 August 2025 · Edited 28 March 2026 · Written by Benjamin Clark