In this chapter, we aim to provide a short overview of statistical physics and thermodynamics. Both are major fields within physics on which numerous books have been written (Landau and Lifshitz, 1980; Huang, 1987). Attempting to come even close to full coverage of these topics herewould be futile and unnecessary. Rather,we will focus on topics most relevant to highlighting the similarities between the physics of these fields and the methods of generative AI that we will cover in the remainder of the book.