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BZBofan ZhuHikaru online My getting-started guide

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Guide home A letter to new university students How to get started in research

Start learning

Your first AI project: where to begin?Which foundations do you need, and how much?Terminology & conferences · 中文 Choose a paper to read

Research directions

What do different AI research areas study?Large language models: understanding, generation, and reasoning Agents: getting models to do things Computer vision: understanding images Multimodal models: connecting images and language Generative models: how an image is made Reinforcement learning: actions have consequences World models: predict, then act Embodied AI: from seeing to acting Efficiency and systems: making models run Interdisciplinary AI: starting with questions from other fields

While doing research

Finding and reading papers Understand your experiments Writing, figures, and talks Contacting researchers and collaborating Working with AI Submission and publication

Experience & life

Experience, practical lessons, and wrong turns Building your research workflow My Freshman-Year Review: The World Suddenly Opens Wide Living well

Look outside

Lookout: what are researchers and labs working on?About this guide

Resource index

Resource index Courses, textbooks, and foundations Research methods and everyday tools Courses, papers, and projects by direction Blogs, interviews, and information channels Author blogs and research notes LessWrong: begin with your own question Research experience, Q&A, and AMAs Mu Li: from courses to close paper reading Getting to know research groups

Questions & conversations

AMA discussions

Questions & conversationsHIKARU / 2026-10-05

AMA discussions

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