A free course · no sign-up
What Has Hokkien Mee Got to Do With AI?
This course explains AI through 1 hawker stall, in 21 short lessons of about 3 minutes each, for ages 8 to 80. Read it, or listen to it.
- Free
- No sign-up
- About 1 hour
- Transcript on every lesson
Your progress is saved on this device only.
How it works
Read, try, notice
Every lesson is one small idea at one hawker stall, told by the stallholder himself, in plain English. You read it in about 3 minutes, you try one thing, and you start noticing AI in your own day.
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Read
There are 21 lessons, and each one carries 1 idea in about 3 minutes. The transcript is the lesson: word for word, no summary, no jargon.
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Try
Every lesson asks you to predict, to picture a scene, or to do one small thing that week. You answer before you peek. That is how the idea sticks.
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Notice
By the last serving, you can name what AI is doing when your phone unlocks by face, when the bank blocks a card, and when a chat answer sounds confident and wrong.
The narration
Four languages, one honest note
Every lesson is written and narrated in English first. The Mandarin, Malay and Tamil narration is an AI translation, read in the same voice, and it may be inaccurate. Corrections are welcome, always.
English
The original. The words on the page and the voice in the player were written and narrated first, lesson by lesson.
中文 · Bahasa Melayu · தமிழ்
AI translations of the same lessons, read in the same voice, and they land lesson by lesson. A machine translation can get a word, a number, or a name wrong.
Corrections welcome
If a translation sounds wrong, I want to hear it. Note the lesson and the words, and send it through the contact form.
Send a correctionThe course
8 servings, 21 lessons, about 1 hour
From the wet market at dawn to robots with hands. Every serving stands on its own, and the whole meal takes about an hour.
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Serving 1
The Kitchen Before Dawn
foundations
3 lessons · 10 minutes
See the lessons -
Serving 2
The Three Things Machines Learn
classical machine learning
3 lessons · 7.5 minutes
See the lessons -
Serving 3
The Chef With a Thousand Eyes
deep learning and perception
2 lessons · 6 minutes
See the lessons -
Serving 4
The Chef Who Invents New Dishes
generative AI and LLMs
3 lessons · 9.5 minutes
See the lessons -
Serving 5
The Stall That Thinks for Itself
AI agents
3 lessons · 9.5 minutes
See the lessons -
Serving 6
When AI Gets a Body
embodied AI and robots
3 lessons · 10.5 minutes
See the lessons -
Serving 7
The Stall You Can Trust
AI ethics and governance
2 lessons · 6.5 minutes
See the lessons -
Serving 8
The Wise Regular
limits, meaning, and living with AI
2 lessons · 7 minutes
See the lessons
Who it is for
8 to 80, one counter
If you are 8
You already know the stall. The course only adds the words for what the stallkeeper is really doing: predicting, sorting, learning from examples. Read it with a grown-up if you like.
If you are 38
The headlines call it magic or menace, and it is neither. After 21 short reads, you can tell the difference, at work and at the dinner table.
If you are 80
Big text, short lessons, no sign-up, nothing to install. If you can read a menu, you can read this course. Your seat at the table is ready.
Running this for a class, a grandchild, or an elder? The teach page has the session shape, and a one-page cheatsheet to print.
Taste one
Sample lesson: Sorting the Prawns: Fresh or Spoiled?
Lesson 2.1, straight from the course. This is the whole shape: a scene, one idea, a try, one line to take away.
I run a Hokkien Mee stall. Every morning at 5 a.m., you will find me at the wet market, buying and choosing prawns. Fresh ones go into my basket. Spoiled ones stay out. I do not write anything down. I do not run any tests. I pick up a prawn, feel it, look at it, and just know. I do this 500 times before the sun is properly up.
Pull up a stool.
One hour, 21 short reads, and AI stops being a headline. The first plate is on the house.
Start the course