About this Course #

This course is an introduction to generative artificial intelligence, chatbots and large language models. It is aimed at newcomers to the field as well as AI users who would like to understand the technology better and to get the most out of it.

Generative AI is not magic. In fact, it’s pretty easy to understand conceptually what’s happening under the hood of chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok or Claude. With this course, I want to offer a deeper understanding of how generative AI works. I believe this will enable you to use it more effectively and responsibly.

In addition to this website, I offer AI workshops and training for companies and organizations. If you would like to book me, or have any feedback about this material, please get in touch.

About the Author #

I’m Yves Peirsman. I’ve been active in language technology and artificial intelligence for over twenty years. I studied linguistics in Leuven (Belgium) and Aarhus (Denmark), and natural language processing (NLP) in Edinburgh (Scotland). I obtained a PhD in computational linguistics from the University of Leuven and was a post-doctoral researcher in the NLP Group at Stanford University (US). After a few years in industry as an NLP engineer, at Textkernel, Wolters Kluwer, and my own consultancy company NLP Town, I am now the co-founder and CTO of Deontic, a startup that develops AI software for the mobility industry. I also organize the Belgium NLP Meetups, a series of informal events for NLP enthusiasts in Belgium.

Next to my job, I love reading and writing. My short stories have appeared in multiple literary magazines, and I’ve written two crime novels: ‘De burgemeester’ (The Mayor, Houtekiet, 2020), which won the ‘Fintro Prijs Spannend Boek’, and ‘Oude wonden’ (Old Wounds, Houtekiet, 2021). In February 2025, I published my first literary novel, ‘Praat dan met mij’ (Talk to Me, Tzara), in which artificial intelligence plays a major role.