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Generative AI for Everyone

Published by O'Reilly Media, Inc.

Beginner content levelBeginner

Understand generative AI, use it well, and know its limits

Course Outcomes:

  • Explain what generative AI is and how it works in plain English, and see where it fits in your organization
  • Write effective prompts using one simple, repeatable framework you can use the next day
  • Recognize AI's limits (hallucinations, bias, privacy) and know when to trust it, verify it, or avoid it
  • Understand today's landscape: multimodal AI, reasoning models, AI agents, retrieval (RAG), and the major providers

Join Altaf Rehmani for a practical, hands-on introduction to generative AI built for non-technical professionals. You'll start with a live demo and the AI-first mindset, then build a plain-English mental model of how these tools actually work, no math required. You'll learn to prompt well with a simple framework, see real company case studies with credible numbers (and what the humans still did), and get a clear-eyed look at the risks along with a simple rule for when to trust AI and when to check it. You'll leave able to use these tools on your real work, plus concrete steps to try the same week.

What you’ll learn and how you can apply it

  • How generative AI works and what it can do now, from multimodal input to AI agents
  • A prompting framework (C.R.E.A.T.E.) you can apply to your own tasks immediately
  • How to tell hype from real, responsible use, and where AI fits (and doesn't) in your work

This live event is for you because...

  • You're a business or technology professional who wants to understand what this technology means for you and your work, and start using it well.

Prerequisites

Course Follow-Up:

Schedule

The time frames are only estimates and may vary according to how the class is progressing.

Foundations, mindset, and prompting (60 minutes)

  • Presentation: the AI-first mindset; what generative AI is and how it works in plain English; what it can do today (multimodal, reasoning models, and AI agents at a glance); and how to prompt well using the C.R.E.A.T.E. framework
  • Live demos: turning messy notes into a polished email; improving a weak prompt into a strong one
  • Hands-on exercise: rewrite a weak prompt using the framework
  • Q&A
  • Break

Applications, case studies, and responsible use (60 minutes)

  • Presentation: real-world case studies with numbers (Klarna in customer service, GitHub Copilot in software, Harvard/BCG on knowledge work); grounding AI on your own data with retrieval (RAG); open vs closed models and the four major providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft); the main risks and limitations; and a simple trust–verify–avoid rule for using AI responsibly
  • Live demo: using an AI assistant to do real knowledge work across your own files
  • Hands-on exercise/discussion: identify where generative AI fits in your work, and practice spotting hallucinations
  • Wrap-up: what to try tomorrow, plus a short list of experiments for the week
  • Q&A

Your Instructor

Altaf Rehmani

Altaf Rehmani works for a large financial services organization as a digital transformation specialist leading Automation , Business Application development (using low-code) and as a generative AI consultant to various groups. With more than 20 years of experience across large enterprises and startups, he's interested in all things digital and how they can be used to build the businesses of the future.

Skills covered

  • Generative AI
  • AI Principles