Professor Li Hongyi's 2025 Generative AI Course Notes: A Complete Path from Basics to Practice

A collection of learning resources for Professor Li Hongyi's 2025 course 'Introduction to Generative Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning' at National Taiwan University, including Colab notebooks, notes, and experimental code, suitable for developers who want to learn generative AI systematically. This article will share insights from multiple aspects including course background, structure and content, technical details, and learning paths.

Professor Li Hongyi of National Taiwan University is a benchmark figure in the Chinese-speaking AI education community. His machine learning courses are well-known for being easy to understand and emphasizing both theory and practice. The newly launched 2025 course 'Introduction to Generative Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning' focuses on generative AI technology, systematically organizing content from basic concepts to cutting-edge applications. It helps learners understand model principles through numerous runnable code examples and experiments, making it a high-quality resource for AI beginners or those looking to enhance their skills.

The course adopts a modular design and covers core topics:

1. Foundation of Large Language Models: Starting with the HuggingFace ecosystem, it explains the loading, fine-tuning, and deployment of pre-trained models, and helps you quickly get started with mainstream models like BERT and GPT through code demonstrations;
2. Context Engineering: In-depth discussion of key technologies such as prompt design, context window management, and few-shot learning;
3. Practical Projects: Equipped with multiple Colab notebooks containing complete code and annotations, which can be run in the cloud without configuring a local environment.

The architecture of the learning repository reflects pragmatic design:

• lectures/: Colab notebooks organized by class sessions, each file corresponding to a topic;
• notes/: Learning notes and summaries in Markdown format;
• assignments/: Implementation attempts for after-class exercises;
• resources/: Reference papers, external links, and slide pointers. All notebooks are optimized for Colab's free T4 GPU, while some large models (e.g., Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct) require Colab Pro or A100 support.

Differentiated strategies are recommended for learners with different backgrounds:

• Beginner Path: Start with LLM basics, understand the fundamental principles of the Transformer architecture, familiarize yourself with the model calling process through HuggingFace examples, and first build an intuitive understanding;
• Advanced Path: Focus on context engineering and fine-tuning techniques, try modifying example code to implement variants, and read papers in the resources section to deepen theoretical knowledge;
• Practitioner Path: Skip directly to the assignments section to solve practical problems, and go back to relevant chapters to fill in gaps when encountering unfamiliar concepts.

Professor Li Hongyi's courses have an active Chinese-speaking learning community. Learning notes are available on GitHub, and complete video lectures can be found on YouTube. The multimedia learning model of video + code + notes lowers the barrier to learning generative AI. Note: This repository is personal learning notes, not a redistribution of course materials. Original course resources should be obtained through official channels.

The 2025 course already covers cutting-edge directions such as multimodal models and Agent systems. This set of learning resources is not only a summary of current knowledge but also a continuously updated living document. For tech professionals who want to stay competitive in the AI wave, systematically learning this course is a wise investment.