Artificial intelligence is no longer a specialist discipline. It is a core business capability — and the practitioners who understand both how AI works and how organisations make it work are among the most valuable people in any industry today.
The AI Handbook: Mastering Core Algorithms, Learning Models and Intelligent Systems Design is a rigorous, practical guide to the full AI stack, written for professionals who need more than surface-level familiarity with the technology. Beginning with the foundational principles of intelligent agent design and the Enterprise Big Data Framework, the book builds progressively through search and optimisation, reinforcement learning, neural network architecture and training, and large language models — before bringing everything together in a capstone chapter on enterprise AI strategy, deployment, and governance.
Each chapter combines precise technical explanation with worked business examples drawn from financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, logistics, and the public sector. Python laboratory exercises in every chapter — covering implementations from A* search and Q-learning on FrozenLake to MNIST classification in PyTorch and LoRA fine-tuning of TinyLlama — give you the hands-on fluency that no amount of reading alone can develop.
The book provides complete coverage of the APMG AI Fundamentals examination syllabus. Every topic the examination tests is developed here from first principles — agent design, search algorithms, machine learning, neural networks, natural language processing, and enterprise AI deployment — at a depth that prepares you not just to pass the examination but to do the work the qualification is designed to certify.
Whether you are preparing for the APMG credential, leading an AI programme, working with AI teams as a product manager or strategist, or simply determined to understand the technology that is reshaping every industry, this is the handbook that will take you there.
