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Introduction to Generative AI Course
Generative AI tools, such as large language models (LLMs) have practical use and can increase our productivity today: they can engage in a conversation with us and plan, brainstorm, summarise and explain. AI tools are also useful for helping with Excel challenges, for data analysis and for coding in computer languages such as SQL or Python
Who Should Attend
This course is for people who want to take advantage of Generative AI in their daily tasks. It is aimed at a general audience.
Pre-requisites
None. This is a beginner level course. No previous knowledge or experience of Generative AI is required.
Course Length
This is a full day course.
Content
The course covers:
- an introduction to Generative AI and an explanation of LLMs;
- get started with generative AI; sign up to a free service
- a tour of some current Generative AI services and LLMs: Microsoft’s Copilot, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude and Google’s Gemini;
- practical exercises on how to use LLMs effectively (such as prompt engineering) to be more productive in everyday tasks;
Exercises
This is a group exercise. Attendees form four teams and each team has different specific tasks and a rather glib name.
- Brainstormers generate novel ideas and possibilities and think creatively
- Explainers describe how things work, explain the root cause of a problem and suggest how it can be fixed.
- Planners make a plan for a task or set of activities. This could be a tiny plan, that take a few minutes to execute, or a grand plan that is implemented over decades.
- Reviewers evaluate, summarise and improve a document or text. They may also change the style and tone.
Write better prompts
There is a short individual exercise to practise writing better prompts: those that encourage more accurate and relevant responses from the AI tool. We may use the RICE Framework to help with this.
This is a group exercise. Attendees form four teams and each team has different specific tasks and a rather glib name.
- Thinkers use the AI tool in ways that are perhaps not obvious at first sight. The capabilities of AI tools in generating, reviewing, improving and summarising text are well known. This team explore capabilities that are not so well known: reasoning about the physical world, doing algebra, writing a poem, and writing and speaking in languages other than English.
- Imagers explore the AI tool’s prowess in understanding images: for example, to describe an image, to read text in the image even if on signage, to understand and interpret particular types of images such as maps, business charts, and to perceive the emotional state of a person from their image.
- Retrievers provide the AI tool with a document and ask it to answer questions based solely on the contents of the document (and not to use its general knowledge and also not search the web). These documents could be a PDF or Word document, or a web page and its direct links.
- Customisers configure the AI tool to respond in a certain way, by telling the AI tool something about themselves and their interests and how they would like the AI tool to respond to them, and giving the AI tool specific “system” instructions. If using ChatGPT, they also explore custom GPTs, customised version of ChatGPT created by Open AI, the makers of ChatGPT, and other third parties, and specialised for a particular task such as a personal tutor or an image generator. If time allows , they may build their own custom GPT.
Course Style
The course has has both tutorials and group exercises. In tutorials, attendees follow the instructor step by step or prompt-by-prompt. In the group exercises, attendees work in groups of about 4 - 5 people in breakout rooms for about 25-30 minutes. Once back in the main room, a spokesperson for each group summarises their conclusions to the class.