welcome
Thank you for purchasing the MEAP edition of this book.
Artificial intelligence is moving incredibly fast. New models, tools, and products appear almost every week, each promising to change how we work, create, search for information, and interact with technology. With so much happening at once, it can be difficult to separate lasting ideas from temporary hype.
That is why we wrote this book.
Rather than focusing only on individual tools, we look at the patterns behind modern AI systems. These patterns help explain not just how today’s applications work, but also how to evaluate new technologies as they emerge.
We begin with the foundations of large language models and then move into prompt engineering, open and closed source models, retrieval-augmented generation, AI agents, and generative AI art. Along the way, we connect these concepts to real-world use cases, showing how the different pieces can be combined to build useful AI-powered systems.
You do not need to be an AI researcher to follow the book. Technical ideas are introduced in plain language, supported by practical examples, and explained with a focus on why they matter. Our goal is not simply to teach you how to use a specific model or platform. It is to help you understand the decisions, trade-offs, and architectures behind modern AI applications.