Fast.ai Review
VisitOpen-source deep learning courses, software, and research for coders
fast.ai is an open-source deep learning education platform for software developers learning practical AI and neural networks.
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Open-source deep learning courses, software, and research for coders
fast.ai is an open-source deep learning education platform for software developers learning practical AI and neural networks.
AI Panel Score
0 AI reviews
fast.ai's primary offering is a set of free online courses, most notably 'Practical Deep Learning for Coders' and the newer 'How To Solve It With Code.' These courses are structured so that learners begin writing working models immediately, using real datasets, before diving into underlying theory. Course materials include video lectures, Jupyter notebooks, and accompanying written content.
The fastai library, built on top of PyTorch, provides a layered API that exposes high-level components for common deep learning tasks while allowing access to lower-level PyTorch primitives when needed. The project also maintains nbdev, a tool that enables software development directly inside Jupyter notebooks with full support for testing, documentation generation, and git-compatible version control. A companion textbook, 'Practical Deep Learning for Coders with fastai and PyTorch,' was published through O'Reilly and covers the same curriculum as the course.
fast.ai courses and software are aimed at working software developers and data practitioners who have coding experience but limited prior exposure to machine learning. All core courses and libraries are free. The Solveit platform, announced in late 2024 as part of fast.ai joining Answer.AI, is a separate interactive coding environment with its own feature set. Comparable open-source deep learning frameworks include PyTorch Lightning and Keras; comparable course platforms include Coursera's deeplearning.ai and Hugging Face courses.
The fastai library and nbdev are open-source and available on GitHub. The library targets Python environments and integrates directly with PyTorch. Courses are delivered via the web and use Jupyter notebooks, which can be run locally or on cloud platforms such as Google Colab and Kaggle Kernels.
A free online course covering disinformation, bias and fairness, ethical foundations, practical tools, privacy and surveillance, and algorithmic colonialism for those working in tech.
A course offering over 30 hours of video content covering deep learning foundations through advanced topics including Stable Diffusion, released as Practical Deep Learning for Coders Part 2.
A new course and educational platform from fast.ai (via Answer.AI) designed to make exploration and iterative development easier and faster through code-based problem solving.
A free course teaching deep learning through hands-on coding first, with theory introduced progressively, including a complete from-scratch rewrite covering modern deep learning techniques.
An educational platform with specific features designed to support exploration and iterative development, integrated with fast.ai's 'How to Solve it With Code' course.
A deep learning Python library built on PyTorch that provides a layered API with high-level components enabling practitioners to quickly achieve state-of-the-art results in standard deep learning tasks.
A Python library that makes it easy for users to download, verify, and extract archives, serving as a utility component within the fastai ecosystem.
A Python library that makes data transformations reversible and extensible through the power of multiple dispatch, enabling reversible pipelines in data science workflows.
A tool that enables software development directly within Jupyter notebooks, solving the Jupyter+git conflict problem and integrating with Quarto for documentation and productivity.
A conda mini-distribution focused on the PyTorch ecosystem that simplifies installation and updates of libraries such as PyTorch and related packages.
A 600-page book co-authored with O'Reilly covering deep learning with fastai and PyTorch, providing a companion reference to the free online courses.
Anyone with basic coding experience who wants to learn deep learning and AI. Fast.ai is a non-profit research group whose entire course catalog, software libraries, and community resources are provided at no cost.
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Common questions answered by our AI research team
Yes, fast.ai courses are free. The product description explicitly identifies them as free courses.
fast.ai uses PyTorch as its deep learning framework, accessed through the fastai Python library built on top of PyTorch.
nbdev solves the git conflict problem with Jupyter notebooks. Previously, using git with Jupyter could create conflicts and break notebooks; nbdev2 fully resolved this issue.
fast.ai currently offers two courses: Practical Deep Learning for Coders and How to Solve it With Code. A book companion (Practical Deep Learning for Coders with fastai and PyTorch) is also available.
No. fast.ai structures courses around hands-on coding first, with theory introduced progressively rather than as a prerequisite.
