AI BASIC TRAINING
Short History of AI
Do’s & Dont’s of AI
Get Started Immediately with One Prompt
Welcome to your first step into the world of Artificial Intelligence (AI)
This AI Basics Training is specially designed to introduce you to AI—Artificial Intelligence—quickly and easily. AI is everywhere: from smart assistants to automatic translations. But how can you use it to make your work or life easier?
You’ll get a simple explanation of the do’s and don’ts, helping you understand the basics.
We believe AI should be accessible to everyone. By following this basics course, you’ll discover just how simple and powerful AI can be.
The roots of Artificial Intelligence (AI) date back to the 1950s, when researchers like Alan Turing and John McCarthy began speculating about machines that could “think.” In the decades that followed, development progressed slowly, with alternating periods of optimism and disappointment (the so-called “AI winters”). For a long time, AI was primarily academic or experimental, focusing on recognizing patterns in data or playing games such as chess or Go.
It wasn’t until the 2010s, driven by affordable cloud computing power and massive amounts of digital data, that AI truly took off. Deep learning—a technique where neural networks with many layers can recognize patterns—enabled the training of AI models capable of classifying images, converting speech to text and vice versa, and performing complex analyses.
The introduction of ChatGPT by OpenAI in 2022 marked a new milestone. ChatGPT is a so-called “Large Language Model” (LLM) that can communicate in natural language, answer complex questions, and even produce creative texts. Whereas AI previously operated mostly invisibly behind the scenes, ChatGPT suddenly brought AI into the public eye as an accessible tool.
After ChatGPT, there was an explosion of AI applications. From smart text generators to AI-driven image creation tools, and from voice assistants to music composers powered by machine learning—the internet now seems flooded with tools claiming to make your life easier, more enjoyable, or more productive.
This abundance can be overwhelming. New AI startups and products seem to appear everywhere:
- Text tools that assist with writing, summarizing, translating, and editing.
- Image and video editors that generate, retouch, or edit content based on prompts.
- Analytics applications that sift through data and identify trends you might overlook.
- Personal assistants that help with scheduling, note-taking, customer interactions, or email management.
- Specialized platforms for code suggestions, legal advice, marketing campaigns, and more.
The downside of all these AI apps is that it’s easy to lose track of what’s essential. Do you really need to master and test all these separate tools? The answer: not necessarily. With a solid foundation and the right prompts, you can often achieve impressive results using just one powerful AI system (like ChatGPT), without needing to become a “prompt engineer.”
Do’s:
- Be clear and specific in your queries: The more precise you formulate your problem or question, the more valuable the answer will be.
- Combine AI with your own expertise: Use AI as an extra set of “brains,” but don’t blindly trust the output. Your experience, insights, and ethical considerations remain essential.
- Experiment: Try different approaches or prompts and learn through trial and error to understand the strengths and weaknesses of an AI tool.
Don’ts
- Don’t blindly trust AI: AI models can hallucinate (make things up) or provide outdated information.
- Avoid inputting sensitive data: Do not enter privacy-sensitive or confidential business information.
- Don’t expect AI to solve everything: AI is powerful but not a magical solution. Treat it as a tool, not a replacement for all human knowledge and expertise.
With this background knowledge, you can take your first steps into AI with more confidence. In the next sections of this training, you’ll learn how to get started practically: from creating a ChatGPT account to using the ultimate ‘prompt of all prompts’ to clarify your challenges and find solutions without drowning in a sea of individual AI apps.
Now, we’ll translate that knowledge into concrete steps. You’ll learn how to get started with ChatGPT, what practice steps you can take to refine your prompts, and how to use the ‘prompt of all prompts’ to quickly get to the heart of your challenge without getting tangled up in a maze of AI tools. Let’s get started!
Before you can start leveraging AI effectively, you need access to it. ChatGPT provides that access: it’s a model that understands questions in natural language and responds accordingly. This allows you to “chat” with AI without requiring any technical background.
Step 1: Create an Account
- Go to https://chat.openai.com (or a similar platform of your choice).
- Click on ‘Sign Up’ and follow the steps. Typically, you’ll need to provide your email address and create a password, or you can log in using your Google or Apple account.
- Explore the Interface: Once logged in, you’ll see a chat interface, similar to WhatsApp, where you can type your questions.
Step 2: Ask a Simple Question
Start simple. For example, try:
“Explain to me in simple terms what artificial intelligence is.”
This way, you’ll immediately experience how the model responds and whether you understand what it provides in return.
The quality of AI responses depends entirely on the question you ask—your ‘prompt.’ Think of a prompt as the instructions you give to the AI. The more specific, context-aware, and clear it is, the better the outcome.
Exercise:
1. General prompt: “Tell me something about productivity.”
• You will likely receive a fairly broad answer.
2. More specific: “Give me five tips to structure my workday more productively, considering I have a family with three children and irregular working hours.”
• Now the model will take into account a family situation and irregular work hours, resulting in more practical and targeted advice.
By varying the level of detail and context, you’ll discover how to guide the AI without needing to know any technical tricks.
You might feel like you need a different tool for every problem—a text app, a project management app, a brainstorming app… But often, with just one well-crafted prompt in ChatGPT, you can arrive at surprisingly effective solutions.
The Prompt of All Prompts:
“I have [describe your problem or question] and I would like a solution that takes into account [your specific situation or constraints]. Help me by first understanding my situation and then providing practical and immediately applicable advice.”
This prompt encourages you to first clarify what your question is and in what context you’re seeking a solution. It then prompts ChatGPT to work step by step:
1. Describing your problem: This helps you clarify the problem for yourself.
2. Stating the context or constraints: This makes the AI’s response more relevant and realistic.
3. Ask for practical advice: This helps avoid vague, theoretical answers and ensures you get something you can apply immediately.
Example:
“I’m struggling to organize my busy schedule better. I work 32 hours a week, have two children with afternoon activities, and want to make time for exercise. Please help me by first understanding my situation and then proposing a concrete weekly schedule that I can try right away.”
Such a prompt often results in a clear, action-oriented response. This reduces your need to turn to countless apps or “special prompts.” You engage in a direct dialogue with the AI, tailored to your context.
Even with the best prompt and a powerful AI: always keep thinking for yourself. AI can fabricate information (hallucinate), provide outdated knowledge, or simply overlook something. Always cross-check the generated advice against your own knowledge, intuition, and external sources.
Exercise:
- Formulate three different problems from your own life or work.
- Use the ‘Prompt of All Prompts’ to ask ChatGPT for help.
- Compare the answers and check: are they useful, practical, and do they align with what you already know?
In this way, you not only get to know the AI but also learn how to ask better questions yourself. That’s the core of this training: learning to work with AI consciously, critically, and effectively.
Now that you understand the basics, you can build on this further. In the next section, we’ll dive deeper into:
- Distinguishing between reliable and less reliable sources.
- Combining AI insights with human creativity.
- Designing your own ‘prompt strategies’ for complex projects.
We hope that this ‘Free AI Basic Training’ has given you a foundation to apply AI consciously, purposefully, and practically, without drowning in a sea of separate applications. It’s time to experiment and discover how AI can make your work and life a bit easier.
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Feel free to contact us if you want to learn more about how AI can further support your organization, for example, in optimizing Agile working according Scrum.
Questions?
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