Week 1
Ch 1 — The AI Revolution
A brief history of AI, machine learning vs deep learning, the Transformer breakthrough, why AI changed after 2022, the types of AI (predictive, generative, conversational, multimodal, agentic, physical), and where AI already lives across every profession — AI as a general-purpose technology like electricity
P1First Contact
Week 2
Ch 2 — How AI Models Actually Work
What a large language model is without any math — tokens, context windows, parameters, training, fine-tuning, and inference, all by analogy — so you can reason about what AI can and cannot do
P2Three Models, One Prompt
Week 3
Ch 3 — The Model Landscape: Providers, Families, and Tradeoffs
The frontier labs and their ecosystems (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI, Meta, Mistral, DeepSeek, Alibaba/Qwen, Microsoft), why every provider ships a family of models (flagship, mini, nano, reasoning, realtime), why smaller models exist, the large-vs-small tradeoffs, and open vs closed weights
P3The Model-Selection Matrix
Week 4
Ch 4 — Prompting as Professional Communication
Prompting reframed as communication, not incantation — clear objectives, context, examples, iterative refinement, role prompting, few-shot, chain-of-thought conceptually, and reusable templates
P4One Email, Three Ways
Week 5
Ch 5 — Choosing the Right Tool for the Job
Moving from "I use ChatGPT" to "I choose the best tool" — the specialized landscape of general assistants, image, video, audio, music, document, meeting, translation, research, and coding tools, and how to evaluate which one fits a task
P5Deck in an Hour
Week 6
Ch 6 — Everyday Productivity I: Words, Email, and Meetings
Using AI for the daily work of words — writing, email, reports, brainstorming, and turning a messy meeting into structured notes and owned action items — while keeping your voice and verifying every commitment
P6Inbox & Meeting Makeover
Week 7
Ch 7 — Everyday Productivity II: Research, Documents, and Data
AI for research, summaries, reading a long document, spreadsheets, and decision support — with the discipline of grounding a summary in its source and catching the fabricated claim
P7Summarize and Verify
Week 8
Ch 8 — Understanding AI's Limits
Hallucinations, bias, confidence versus correctness, outdated knowledge, fabricated citations, verification strategies, human oversight, and when NOT to use AI — plus the cumulative midterm covering Weeks 1-8
P8The Fact-Check Gauntlet (MIDTERM)