“How I use LLMs” Practical Guide to AI by Andrej Karpathy

If you’re curious about what these AI tools can really do beyond the basics, this comprehensive video from Andrej Karpathy—founding member of OpenAI and former AI Director at Tesla—offers a clear, educational walkthrough of today’s AI landscape.

🎯 Technical Level: Beginner to Advanced

• Starts with basic concepts accessible to newcomers
• Gradually progresses to more advanced capabilities and technical insights
• Includes practical demonstrations for all skill levels
• Valuable whether you’re just starting out or looking to deepen your understanding

What This Video Covers

Karpathy provides a thorough exploration of large language models, starting with the basics and building to advanced applications:

1. Fundamental Concepts: How these models work with tokens, context windows, and knowledge cutoffs
2. The AI Ecosystem: Comparisons between ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, and others
3. Model Capabilities: The differences between standard and “thinking” models trained with reinforcement learning
4. Tool Integration: Using internet search, Python code execution, file processing, and more
5. Multimodal Features: Working with text, audio, images, and video
6. Personal Workflows: Real examples of how Karpathy uses these tools in his daily life

Why It’s Worth Your Time

What makes this video exceptional is Karpathy’s approach:

• He demystifies complex concepts with clear explanations and visualizations
• He shows his actual usage patterns with authentic examples
• He compares different tools objectively, highlighting their strengths and limitations
• He demonstrates both basic interactions and advanced capabilities

Your 90-Minute Investment

This comprehensive guide truly serves everyone:

• For complete beginners: Clear explanations of what these tools are and basic ways to use them
• For casual users: Practical tips to get more value from everyday interactions
• For regular users: Discovering advanced capabilities you didn’t know existed
• For professionals: Learning how an AI expert integrates these tools into sophisticated workflows

Even if you’re familiar with the basics, you’ll likely discover new ways to enhance your productivity and effectiveness with these powerful tools.

[VIDEO LINK]

Question for you: Which AI assistant features have you found most useful in your own work? Share your experience in the comments!

• Chapters
• 00:00:00 Intro into the growing LLM ecosystem
• 00:02:54 ChatGPT interaction under the hood
• 00:13:12 Basic LLM interactions examples
• 00:18:03 Be aware of the model you’re using, pricing tiers 00:22:54 Thinking models and when to use them
• 00:31:00 Tool use: internet search
• 00:42:04 Tool use: deep research
• 00:50:57 File uploads, adding documents to context
• 00:59:00 Tool use: python interpreter, messiness of the ecosystem
• 01:04:35 ChatGPT Advanced Data Analysis, figures, plots 01:09:00 Claude Artifacts, apps, diagrams
• 01:14:02 Cursor: Composer, writing code
• 01:22:28 Audio (Speech) Input/Output
• 01:27:37 Advanced Voice Mode aka true audio inside the model 01:37:09 NotebookLM, podcast generation
• 01:40:20 Image input, OCR
• 01:47:02 Image output, DALL-E, Ideogram, etc.
• 01:49:14 Video input, point and talk on app
• 01:52:23 Video output, Sora, Veo 2, etc etc.
• 01:53:29 ChatGPT memory, custom instructions
• 01:58:38 Custom GPTs 02:06:30 Summary