AIU began with a simple idea:
draw the difficult stuff.
If AI is going to affect everybody, a working understanding of it should not belong only to specialists.
Three degrees of separation from the birth of AI.
John O'Hare first pitched the idea for a cartoon-based Sketchy Knowledge of AI in 2018 while Head of Innovations at Nokia. An early draft caught the eye of Bell Labs President Dr Marcus Weldon, who signed the sketch you can see here.
Marcus Weldon was President of Bell Labs.
Bell Labs was home to Claude Shannon, one of the participants in the 1956 Dartmouth workshop that gave artificial intelligence its name.
Marcus Weldon → Bell Labs → Claude Shannon → Dartmouth
Admittedly, the connection is a little sketchy. But then, so are the cartoons.
Because motivation comes before mastery.
AIU is deliberately designed around Keller's ARCS-V model: win attention, establish relevance, build confidence, provide satisfaction and support volition. Humour is not decoration; it is part of the learner's reward for staying with the idea.