LIB471
Using AI in Your Work and Life
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is now widely accessible, offering significant benefits for personal and professional use. Imagine a free assistant that summarizes emails, writes reports, generates artwork, music, videos, tutors in various subjects and handles daily tasks. This rapidly evolving field can seem daunting, but this course is designed for everyone, whether you're new to AI, seeking to enhance your skills or struggling to keep up. Covering large language models such as ChatGPT and image generators such as DALL-E-3, we’ll unlock AI's potential.
Note: No technical experience is required. AI tools used will be free services.
A $50 discount will be applied automatically for adults 55+.
This course will be offered online on Wednesdays, Sep 11 - Oct 16, from 6:30 - 8:30 p.m.
Overview
Location: Online
Format: Self-paced with weekly virtual class
Duration: 6 weeks
Tuition: $180
Can be applied to:
Liberal Arts for 55+ Certificate
Upcoming Offerings
Course outline
- Week 1
What is “generative AI”? What can it do, and more importantly, what can’t it do (yet)? What is the right way to think about these seemingly magical tools? Preview of the tools we will cover. We will spend at least half the class each week on interactive demonstrations and class participation. - Week 2
What’s a large language model (LLM) like ChatGPT and how do you use it? How can it help you? What is “hallucination,” why does it occur and how can it be avoided? We will cover “prompt engineering”: how to get the best out of an LLM. - Week 3
How do you generate images with tools such as DALL-E-3, how do you refine them and what are their limitations? - Week 4
What are the possibilities for generating other formats such as charts, audio (speech, music) and video? Also, we explore agents: AI that can take actions on our behalf. - Week 5
How do you leverage this technology for an organization? What are customized apps and how can you create one, for example, to answer questions for visitors to a club’s website? We’ll look at what is coming next in this rapidly evolving field. - Week 6
What are the impacts of this technology on business, education, economics, society and humanity? What are the implications for privacy and intellectual property of being able to create “deep fakes”?
What you will learn
By the end of the course, you should be able to:
- Find and engage a large language model with requests of direct benefit to yourself
- Ask productive questions, avoid hallucinations and develop useful dialogues
- Create a wide variety of images using free tools and understand the tools’ limitations
- Understand the state of the art in creating multimedia and artificial speech, music and video
- Explain the current and emerging impacts of this technology on our world
How you will learn
- Participation in Zoom sessions
- Presentations and demonstrations
- Participation in live engagements with AI run by the instructor
- Participation in class discussions
- Optional engagement with AI on personal time with personal equipment
- Reflective essay (applicable only to certificate students)
Learning Materials
No textbook is required. We will provide all course materials online.
Technical Requirements
For online courses, you will need a computer with audio and microphone that is connected to the internet. Canvas is the online system that will be used for the course. For more information and online support, visit Online Learning.