Machina Institute

You are not talking to a model. You are talking to a product.

A free 37-week program in how AI actually works. For everyone, not just engineers. No coding, no subscriptions, no laptop needed.

Cohort 1 starts Monday 7 September 2026.

612 seats left

Free for the first 1,000 students.

One email. No card. Nothing to install.

01 The program in five numbers

02 What makes this different

A prompt you have not measured is a guess.

Most AI courses hand you a list of magic phrases. Most of those phrases do not survive testing. This program teaches you to check them yourself, on a spreadsheet, with a free account.

03 What a session is

90 minutes. Five parts. Every single day.

No mystery about what you are signing up for. Here is the exact shape of every one of the 148 sessions.

0 min4590 min

  1. 01

    Warm-up 10 min

    You do something in the first sixty seconds, before anyone explains anything.

  2. 02

    Learn 25 min

    One idea. A worked example. A diagram. One thing to watch.

  3. 03

    Do 40 min

    You write down what you predict, then run it, then see if you were right.

  4. 04

    Capture 5 min

    Two lines into your AI journal. It runs the whole program.

  5. 05

    Quiz 10 min

    Ten questions. Answers with reasons. You mark it yourself.

04 The ten courses

Ten short courses, 37 weeks.

  1. 01

    AI Foundations

    5 weeks · 20 sessions · 37.5 hours · Prereq: None

    Leave withA model comparison report

  2. 02

    Asking Well

    4 weeks · 16 sessions · 30 hours · Prereq: Course 1

    Leave withA prompt notebook with before and after proof

  3. 03

    Media and Documents

    3 weeks · 12 sessions · 22.5 hours · Prereq: Course 1

    Leave withWork combining text, image and a source document

  4. 04

    Techniques That Hold Up

    3 weeks · 12 sessions · 22.5 hours · Prereq: Course 1

    Leave withA technique bake-off on supplied material

  5. 05

    Judging AI: Your First Eval Flagship

    4 weeks · 16 sessions · 30 hours · Prereq: Course 1

    Leave withA working evaluation spreadsheet

  6. 06

    Measurement You Can Trust Flagship

    3 weeks · 12 sessions · 22.5 hours · Prereq: Course 5

    Leave withAn upgraded eval with spread and a judge

  7. 07

    Truth, Sources and Snake Oil

    4 weeks · 16 sessions · 30 hours · Prereq: Course 1

    Leave withA lab report refuting or confirming a viral claim

  8. 08

    Making It Yours

    4 weeks · 16 sessions · 30 hours · Prereq: Course 1

    Leave withA custom assistant with the eval that proves it

  9. 09

    Safe and Responsible

    4 weeks · 16 sessions · 30 hours · Prereq: Course 1

    Leave withA personal AI policy and a red-team log

  10. 10

    Capstone

    3 weeks · 12 sessions · 22.5 hours · Prereq: Courses 1 and 5

    Leave withA shipped project and a live defense

Only Course 1 is required. Everything else is a recommendation, so you can start where you need to.

05 What you walk away with

A certificate that says what you actually did.

Ten course certificates, four path certificates, one program certificate. Each one names the hours, the sessions, and what was assessed.

05.1 Printed on every course certificate

This assessment was not supervised.

That sentence is printed on every course certificate. Most online AI certificates do not tell you how they were assessed. We do. The one credential backed by a live, supervised defense says so too.

06 What it costs you

A phone and a free account. That is the whole toolchain.

07 Who this is for

This is for you if

  • You use AI most days and are not sure when to trust it.
  • You have to explain or govern this for other people.
  • Your work is words, pictures, documents or decisions.
  • You have never written a line of code and do not intend to.

This is not for you if

  • You want a list of prompts to paste.
  • You want to build models or write code.
  • You want a certificate without doing the work.

08 Save your seat

Cohort 1 starts Monday 7 September 2026.

Free for the first 1,000 students. 612 seats left.

Save my seat

Four 90-minute sessions a week, plus a fifth day for the weekly quiz and a live Q&A. Free tools only. The certificate needs the quizzes passed, the project submitted, and two peer reviews given.

612 seats leftCohort 1 starts Monday 7 September 2026.

Save my seat