MAM5020F — Generative AI for Research
Foundations of Generative AI
Video-led introductory week
Contents
Week 1 is built around video lectures rather than primary literature, so there are no PDFs to host here. Resources used in the week are listed for reference.
Each entry links to the canonical version of the paper — on arXiv, the journal, or the publisher. Where a paper is paywalled, the DOI is given for UCT-library access.
The week's resources are all video material:
- 3Blue1Brown — But what is a neural network? (Sub-Lesson 1.4)
- 3Blue1Brown — Gradient descent (Sub-Lesson 1.4)
- 3Blue1Brown — What is a transformer? (Sub-Lesson 1.6)
- 3Blue1Brown — Attention in transformers (Sub-Lesson 1.6)
- Jonathan Shock — A lightning tour of AI (UCT seminar, Sub-Lesson 1.3)
Primary academic literature begins in Week 2.
Drafted with Claude (Anthropic) and reviewed by Jonathan Shock before publication. AI-generated errors are possible — if you spot one, please email jonathan.shock@uct.ac.za. Full detail: AI Content Disclaimer.
© 2026 Jonathan Shock · MAM5020F: Generative AI for Research · CC BY 4.0