For a while now I’ve been wanting to learn more about LLMs. The problem has been that I wasn’t sure where to start.
So when Kevin Markham launched his course Build an AI chatbot with Python I jumped at the chance to take it. I had previously taken Kevin’s course on Pandas and enjoyed his teaching style. Build an AI chatbot with Python is short (Kevin says you can finish it in an hour, although I took longer) and cheap ($9).
The course starts with the very basics: creating an API key on OpenAI and installing the necessary packages. It ends with using LangChain and LangGraph to create a simple bot that has memory and can keep track of conversations with multiple users. Here’s an example:
Here you can see that Chatbot #1 learned that my name is Ari. I then terminated that bot and created another one. That new bot (#2) did not know my name. I then terminated it and reloaded bot #1. Bot #1 still remembered my name.
Due to its length, the course doesn’t teach you how to build anything more complex than that. But if you are just looking for a brief introduction to the field, then this might be exactly what you are looking for. It certainly was for me!
Kevin is currently working on a followup course (“Build AI agents with Python”) which I am currently reviewing. If people are interested, I can post a review of that course when I finish it as well. You can use this form to contact me and let me know if you are interested in that.
