Introduction to AI

What is AI?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a field in which people have created "smart" algorithms that can "learn" from data. This course focuses on Generative AI (Gen AI), a type of AI that is able to create new content, just like humans can. For example, they can write essays, solve math problems, and win art competitions.

Although Gen AI is extremely useful, it requires humans to direct it on what to do. Often, Gen AIs are like new company interns. They are very capable, but they need clear instructions to do well. Being able to properly instruct Gen AIs is a very powerful skill. You can instruct a Gen AI by sending it a prompt, which is usually a text instruction (e.g. "Give me 5 ice cream flavors"). Gen AIs that read and write text are called large language models (LLMs).

Why should I care about Generative AI?

Generative AI can be used to automate creative tasks that so far only humans have been able to do. This is saving people and companies money and time. If you can describe your task to a Generative AI, it can likely either do it for you or give you a solid starting point. Here are a few of our favorite applications of Generative AI:

• Writing status reports
• Generating marketing content
• Explaining and simplifying content

See more use cases here.

How do I get started with Generative AI?

This module will provide you with the fundamentals of Gen AI, including prompting strategies, the most popular Gen AIs, and how to use Gen AI in your daily life. This module is completely non-technical, so it should be easy to understand. We will give you all the information you need to know to get started from scratch, so you can quickly get started with using Generative AI. The rest of the modules will improve your ability and knowledge in specific types of prompting and use cases of Generative AI.