How to Actually Learn AI from Scratch in 2026 (Without Paying $1,000 for a Bootcamp)

Shoaib Alam — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 21:22:59 +0000

As an AI Engineer at JPMC and a published NLP researcher, I get asked the same question almost every week: "How do I start learning AI?"

The truth is, the current landscape of AI education is broken. If you want to learn Artificial Intelligence today, you usually run into one of two extremes:

The Math Wall: University courses that drown you in linear algebra and calculus before you even get to write a single line of Python.
The "ChatGPT Wrapper" Trap: Overpriced bootcamps that just teach you how to write prompts, leaving you with zero understanding of how the underlying models actually work.

I wanted to bridge this gap. I wanted to create a clear, fluff-free path that takes a complete beginner from basic Python to building real, production-ready AI systems (like Hybrid RAG).

So, I built AI From Scratch.

What is AI From Scratch?

AI From Scratch is a completely free, open-source educational platform designed specifically for builders, developers, and curious beginners.

Instead of hiding knowledge behind a paywall, I’ve open-sourced an entire curriculum that I wish I had when I was starting out.

Here is what you will find inside:

1. The Complete Beginner Roadmap

A step-by-step, 6-phase roadmap that cuts through the noise. It tells you exactly what to learn, in what order—starting from Python basics, moving through Machine Learning fundamentals, and finishing with Deep Learning and Large Language Models (LLMs).
👉 View the full 2026 Roadmap here

2. "Paper Everyday" — AI Research Made Simple

The AI frontier moves fast. The only way to keep up is by reading research papers. But academic papers are notoriously dense and full of jargon.

In the Papers section, I break down one landmark AI research paper every single day. I strip away the complex academic jargon and explain the core concepts in plain English, so you can actually understand the breakthroughs driving the industry forward.

3. Hands-On, Practical Courses

We focus on applied AI. For example, our current flagship track covers building Hybrid RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) systems—the exact same architecture we use to build fiduciary-grade, scalable AI systems in institutional finance.

Why am I doing this for free?

Because the AI community thrives on open knowledge. When I published my research at EMNLP 2024 (LEGOBench), it was built on the shoulders of open-source research and community tutorials.

AI From Scratch is my way of giving back. If you have been sitting on the sidelines watching the AI revolution happen, this is your starting line.

How to get started?

No sign-ups, no paywalls, no email lists. Just dive straight in.

Check out the Complete AI Roadmap to get your bearings.
Read today's Simplified Research Paper.
Start building!

🔗 Visit the platform: aifromscratch.in

Hi, I'm Shoaib Alam! I'm an AI Engineer specializing in NLP and Hybrid RAG. If you found this helpful, feel free to connect with me on [LinkedIn] or check out my GitHub. Let's build the future of AI together!

Catching AI Red-Handed in Financial Data

Shoaib Alam — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 20:35:41 +0000

When I was building security auditing tools like Git Secret Scanner, the rules were binary: a vulnerability exists, or it doesn't. But when you start building Generative AI pipelines for institutional finance, things get dangerously blurry.

Almost every RAG tutorial online shows you how to chunk a PDF, throw it into a vector database, and build a chatbot. That works fine for toy applications. But in an enterprise banking environment, a single hallucinated decimal point or a swapped currency symbol isn't just a bug—it’s a regulatory compliance violation.

Standard Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) relies on dense vector search, which maps text based on semantic meaning. The problem? "Q2 Revenue was $40M" and "Q3 Revenue was $40M" are semantically identical to a vector database, but completely different to a financial auditor.

I needed a way to force language models to be mathematically deterministic. So, I built FinGuard-RAG.

The Problem: Silent Hallucinations

Let's say you ask an LLM for a company's Q3 revenue based on an SEC 10-K filing. The vector search pulls the right context, but the LLM decides to get creative.

# The Source Text retrieved from our Vector DB
source_context = "The company reported a total operating revenue of $45.2 million for the third quarter of 2023."

# The LLM's generated output (Silent Hallucination)
llm_output = "In Q3 2023, the company saw a total operating revenue of €45.2 million."

If you pass this back to a user, you just swapped Dollars for Euros. A standard LLM evaluation metric (like BLEU or semantic similarity) will score this output highly because the text looks almost perfect.

The Fix: Introducing FinGuard-RAG

In high-stakes environments, we need a "fiduciary-grade" safety net. FinGuard-RAG is a lightweight, deterministic Python library that mathematically extracts every number, date, and currency from both the source text and the generated text, comparing them strictly.

If the LLM outputs a number or currency that does not explicitly exist in the source document, the pipeline crashes.

Here is how you implement it in your generation loop:

from finguard_rag import FiduciaryValidator
from finguard_rag.exceptions import ComplianceHallucinationError

# 1. Initialize the strict validator
validator = FiduciaryValidator(strict_mode=True)

source_text = "The company reported a total operating revenue of $45.2 million for the third quarter of 2023."
generated_text = "In Q3 2023, the company saw a total operating revenue of €45.2 million."

try:
    # 2. Run the deterministic check before returning the output to the user
    audit_result = validator.validate_generation(
        source_context=source_text,
        llm_response=generated_text
    )
    print("Response is compliance-verified. Safe to serve.")

except ComplianceHallucinationError as error:
    # 3. Catch the hallucination red-handed
    print(f"🛑 BLOCKED: {error.message}")
    print(f"Failed Entities: {error.mismatched_entities}")

The Result

Instead of silently passing bad financial data to an end-user, FinGuard-RAG intercepts the response and outputs:

🛑 BLOCKED: Generated text contains numerical/currency entities not present in the source context. Failed Entities: {'currencies': ['€']}

The Future of AI in Finance

As we move toward deploying autonomous AI agent swarms to execute trades or write financial reports, deterministic guardrails are no longer optional—they are the mandatory foundation. We cannot scale autonomous agents without a fiduciary-grade safety net.

I have just open-sourced the initial framework for FinGuard-RAG. If you are building AI pipelines for fintech, hedge funds, or banking, I'd love for you to test it, break it, and help set a new standard for deterministic AI.

Check out the code, drop a star, or open a PR:

alamshoaib134 / FinGuard-RAG

Developed with 🧠 by Shoaib Alam (AI Engineer at JPMC | NLP Researcher @ IIT Gandhinagar | Hybrid RAG Pioneer)

FinGuard-RAG

Fiduciary-Grade RAG Evaluator for Institutional Finance

A deterministic testing framework that strictly validates LLM-generated responses against source financial text. Mathematically flags hallucinated numbers, mismatched dates, and swapped currency symbols — built for zero-tolerance compliance environments.

Why FinGuard-RAG?

In institutional finance, a single hallucinated number can trigger regulatory violations, erroneous trades, or compliance failures. Traditional RAG evaluation metrics (BLEU, ROUGE, BERTScore) are probabilistic and insufficient for fiduciary-grade validation.

FinGuard-RAG takes a different approach:

Deterministic: No ML inference, no external API calls — pure regex-based extraction
Strict: Every number, date, and currency in the LLM output must exist in the source text
Auditable: SHA-256 cryptographic hashes tie every evaluation to its source document
Compliant: Designed for the audit pipelines of tier-1 financial institutions

Installation

pip install finguard-rag

…

View on GitHub

DEV Community: Shoaib Alam