Machina InstituteWorking With AI

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.

Free for the first 1,000 students.
Cohort 1 starts Monday 7 September 2026.
612 seats left.

One email. No card. Nothing to install.

388 of 1,000 free seats taken. 612 left.

The program in five numbers

  • 10courses
  • 148sessions
  • 278hours
  • 0paid tools
  • 1phone is enough

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.

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.

  1. 10min

    Part 1

    Warm-up

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

  2. 25min

    Part 2

    Learn

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

  3. 40min

    Part 3

    Do

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

  4. 5min

    Part 4

    Capture

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

  5. 10min

    Part 5

    Quiz

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

10 + 25 + 40 + 5 + 10 = 90 minutes

The ten courses

Ten short courses. 37 weeks if you take them all.

  1. Course 1. AI Foundations

    5 weeks·20 sessions·37.5 hours

    Leave with
    A model comparison report
    Needs
    None
  2. Course 2. Asking Well

    4 weeks·16 sessions·30 hours

    Leave with
    A prompt notebook with before and after proof
    Needs
    Course 1
  3. Course 3. Media and Documents

    3 weeks·12 sessions·22.5 hours

    Leave with
    Work combining text, image and a source document
    Needs
    Course 1
  4. Course 4. Techniques That Hold Up

    3 weeks·12 sessions·22.5 hours

    Leave with
    A technique bake-off on supplied material
    Needs
    Course 1
  5. Course 5. Judging AI: Your First Eval Flagship

    4 weeks·16 sessions·30 hours

    Leave with
    A working evaluation spreadsheet
    Needs
    Course 1
  6. Course 6. Measurement You Can Trust Flagship

    3 weeks·12 sessions·22.5 hours

    Leave with
    An upgraded eval with spread and a judge
    Needs
    Course 5
  7. Course 7. Truth, Sources and Snake Oil

    4 weeks·16 sessions·30 hours

    Leave with
    A lab report refuting or confirming a viral claim
    Needs
    Course 1
  8. Course 8. Making It Yours

    4 weeks·16 sessions·30 hours

    Leave with
    A custom assistant with the eval that proves it
    Needs
    Course 1
  9. Course 9. Safe and Responsible

    4 weeks·16 sessions·30 hours

    Leave with
    A personal AI policy and a red-team log
    Needs
    Course 1
  10. Course 10. Capstone

    3 weeks·12 sessions·22.5 hours

    Leave with
    A shipped project and a live defense
    Needs
    Courses 1 and 5

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

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.

  • 10course
  • 4path
  • 1program

“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.

What it costs you

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

  • Free accounts on the chat apps you already have. No API keys, no installs, no card.
  • Every session is completable on a phone, deliverable included. Not a reduced version. The same work.
  • Every prompt is a tap to copy. Nobody retypes a paragraph on a phone.
  • A phone-only learner earns exactly the same certificate.

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.

Cohort 1 starts Monday 7 September 2026.

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

One email. No card. Nothing to install.

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 leftFree. Starts 7 September 2026.

Save my seat