Fast.ai and Answer.AI merge, unveil AI code education platform

A new era for fast.ai: Fast.ai, the organization founded to democratize artificial intelligence, is joining Answer.AI and launching a revolutionary educational experience called “How To Solve It With Code.”

• Founded eight years ago by Jeremy Howard and Rachel Thomas, fast.ai aimed to make AI accessible to people worldwide, believing in its potential to empower creativity and innovation.
• The merger with Answer.AI marks a new phase in fast.ai’s mission to make AI accessible to everyone.
• The new beta course, “How To Solve It With Code,” represents an innovative “AI-first” approach to education.

Shifting AI landscape: The accessibility of AI has transformed dramatically since fast.ai’s inception, with large language models (LLMs) making AI available to users without requiring deep technical knowledge.

• Initially, making AI accessible meant teaching people to train their own models, which successfully created many of today’s top AI practitioners.
• LLMs like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini have made AI accessible without the need to understand model training, similar to how the iPhone made the internet accessible without understanding TCP/IP.
• However, users often hit a wall when trying to make changes, add features, or fix bugs in AI-generated code, revealing limitations in current AI coding approaches.

Introducing Dialog Engineering: The new course introduces a novel concept called Dialog Engineering, which represents a fundamental shift in how humans and AI can collaborate in coding and problem-solving.

• Instead of relying on AI to generate large blocks of code, Dialog Engineering promotes a step-by-step collaboration between human and AI.
• This approach creates a feedback loop where each step improves both human understanding and AI performance.
• The resulting code is cleaner, more maintainable, and more powerful than what either human or AI could create independently.

SolveIt platform: To support Dialog Engineering, fast.ai has developed a new platform called SolveIt, designed specifically for this collaborative approach.

• SolveIt is the first tool built explicitly for Dialog Engineering, deeply embedding AI into the development process.
• The platform has been used internally at Answer.AI for months, contributing to their numerous breakthroughs.
• SolveIt allows small teams to achieve extraordinary results by optimizing the combination of human and AI capabilities.

Course details and target audience: The “How To Solve It With Code” course is set to begin on November 26th, led by a team of experts including Jeremy Howard, Johno Whitaker, and Audrey Roy Greenfeld.

• The course will teach real problem-solving using code and AI in tandem, principles of Dialog Engineering, and techniques for building maintainable solutions.
• It is ideal for those who have used AI for coding but want to progress beyond simple prompts.
• Basic familiarity with coding concepts like loops and variables is required, but extensive programming experience is not necessary.
• The course is not suitable for those who believe AI can entirely replace programmers, as it focuses on creating a partnership between human understanding and AI capabilities.

Broader applications: Dialog Engineering extends beyond just coding and can be applied to various problem-solving scenarios.

• The approach can be used for tasks such as analyzing large document sets for data journalism, automating reports, or building complex web applications.
• The core principle remains consistent: break down problems, solve them step-by-step with AI assistance, and build solutions that are truly understood.

A glimpse into the future of programming: This new approach represents the beginning of a new era in programming, where the focus shifts from whether to use AI to how to use it effectively.

• The course aims to shape a future where humans and AI work together to solve problems in ways neither could achieve alone.
• This first cohort will form a special community, similar to the initial fast.ai cohort, exploring and expanding the possibilities of human-AI collaboration.
• The blog post itself was written using Dialog Engineering with SolveIt, demonstrating the practical application of the technique.