99% of Beginners Don't Know the Basics of AI

last week I spent 5 hours and $49 to

complete Google's latest AI Essentials

course for beginners and since I need to

recoup that money to fund my addiction

to parasocial relationships with AI I

made this video to share five key

takeaways from the course the pros and

cons and to give you a definitive answer

as to whether this certificate you

receive at the end will indeed get you

laid I mean paid paid more because you

now have a new skill that was a weird

slip of tongue there takeaway number one

broadly speaking there are three types

of AI tools out there first Standalone

tools are AI powered software designed

to work independently with minimal setup

this category includes general purpose

chat Bots like chache BT Gemini Claude

and perplexity as well as specialized

apps like spico otter AI mid journey and

Gamma although they serve completely

different needs all these tools are

classified as Standalone because they

can be accessed directly through their

websites or apps and can be used without

integration with other software this is

in contrast to the second category tools

with integrated AI features which refers

to built-in enhancements within a

particular piece of software for example

after drafting a post in Google Docs I

can either copy and paste this text over

to a standalone app like chbt to improve

my writing or I can use the built-in or

integrated Gemini for workspace AI

feature to make adjustments another

example would be I can either use mid

Journey as a standalone tool to generate

images for a presentation or I can

create an image directly within Google

Slides by using again gemni for

workspace in these instances chbt and M

Journey are Standalone AI tools and

Google Docs and Google slides are tools

with integrated AI features third a

custom AI solution is an application

that's tailor made to solve a specific

problem for instance John Hopkins

University developed an AI system with

the sole objective of detecting sepsis

this custom AI solution improved

diagnostic accuracy from 2 to 5% to an

average of 40% and if you're like me and

have no technical background you might

think oh custom AI Solutions are

extremely Technical and I'll probably

never have to use them in the workplace

in reality the opposite is true because

well-designed custom AI Solutions should

require little to no technical knoow for

example when I was in the sales team I

managed over 200 clients every quarter

and Performing research on every single

one was obviously timec consuming

nowadays there are custom AI solutions

that can ingest all the information

about those 200 clients taking into

account factors like seasonality

historical data and Industry Trends and

rank those clients by How likely they

are to need assistance helping the

salesperson prioritize their time by the

way if you're thinking of buying

Google's AI Essentials course don't

because I only found out after I paid

for it you get the AI Essentials course

for free if you enroll in the Google

project management certification on

corsera who is kindly sponsoring this

portion of the video regular viewers

know that I have a full-time job and

project management obviously plays a

large part in my day-to-day to be

transparent though I'm mainly

self-taught since there wasn't a go-to

course back in the day but I recently

started the project management

certification on corsera since it's now

like the golden standard for project

management project management is

literally applicable to all Industries

and roles so if you want to be more

organized in the workplace click the

link below to enroll in the Google

project management certification and

unlock the AI Essentials course for free

thank you corsera for sponsoring this

part of the video back to my takeaways

the second learning from the course is a

prompt engineering tip and it's to

surface the implied context to

illustrate this imagine your vegetarian

friend asks you for restaurant

recommendations you instinctively reply

with vegetarian friendly options even if

your friend doesn't explicitly say hey

idiot make sure it's vegetarian here

here the fact that your friend is a

vegetarian is implied context and needs

to be explicitly stated when

communicating with AI tools like Chachi

BT and Google Gemini another example

might be you're preparing to negotiate a

raise with your boss you know in your

head that last year you received a 10%

increase this year you're the highest

performer on the team and the industry

average is a 12% increase so you decide

to ask for 15% raise If You Leave Out

All That implied context when

brainstorming negotiation techniques

with an AI tool you will receive a lower

quality AKA more generic output if you

want to dive deeper into this I have an

entire video on how to write the perfect

prompt so I'll leave a link to that down

below and if you want to make a copy of

my five favorite prompts for

productivity I'll leave a link to my

completely free workspace toolkit as

well takeaway number three know when to

use zero shot and few shot prompting in

a nutshell the word shot simply means

examples zero shot means you use a

prompt with no examples one shot means

you include one example few shot means

you include two or more examples for

instance a zero shot example might look

something like write me a pickup line

for Bumble which is a completely

hypothetical scenario I would never

condone much less participate in a

one-hot prompt would be write me a

pickup line for Bumble reference this

pickup line my friend used that worked

well for him and you include an example

of what your friend wrote A F shop

prompt would look the same as one shot

with just two or more examples of

successful pickup lines and as you can

imagine the more relevant examples you

provide the AI tool the more relevant

the output and for the record if my H

future wife is watching this I've

obviously never done this myself this is

just an example for this video as a

matter of fact I don't I don't even use

dating apps takeaway number four use

Chain of Thought prompting for complex

tasks I've talked about this concept in

previous videos but I really like this

simple and straightforward definition

from Google's course when you divide a

single task into more manageable steps

you help the large language model

produce accurate and consistent results

a relatable real word example would be

writing a cover letter option one you

share your current resume and the job

description with the chatbot and just

prompt it to write you a cover letter

option two with Chain of Thought

prompting you break the large task

writing an entire cover letter into

manageable steps with step one being

based on my resume and the job

description write an attention Gra

having hook for my cover letter then

after making some minor tweaks to the

hook paragraph step two would be pasting

that back into the chatbot and asking it

for the body paragraph rinse and repeat

for the closing paragraph if you want

proof that this works I have an entire

video where I show job Seekers how to

use Chain of Thought prompting to not

only write cover letters but to also

improve their resumés I'll leave a link

down below takeaway number five is a

topic that many of us including myself

tend to overlook when using AI tools and

it's to understand the limitations of AI

broadly speaking there are three main

limitations first the underlying data

that is used to train AI models may be

biased if a text to image model is only

trained on minimalistic Graphics it

might not be able to produce flashy and

bold designs second there simply wasn't

enough information in the source

training data on a given topic many AI

models have a cutoff date so if you ask

for something that happened recently it

won't have enough data on that topic to

give you an accurate accurate answer

finally hallucinations are AI outputs

that are straight up factually

inaccurate sometimes this is a feature

and not a bug when you're brainstorming

new ideas for example other times

hallucinations perpetuate false

information so you definitely want to

double check your answer for what I call

high stake tasks for example what sort

of supplement or vitamin to take given

your health goals when it comes to pros

and cons I'm going to start with who

this course is not for this course is

not for you if you're already using AI

tools like chpt and Google Gemini as

part of your daily workflow and you're

looking to dive deeper into specific AI

use cases and that's because although

they do a great job explaining complex

topics the examples they give in the

course are pretty vague for instance in

one of the lessons they gave an example

where a company uses AI to decrease

customer service response times and that

was it that was entire example it would

have been nice to dive a bit deeper and

talk about whether this company used a

standalone AI tool or custom AI solution

how they trained the workers to use the

AI system how they grounded the data so

that the AI system didn't hallucinate

since this was a customer service um

application right so stuff like that

that being said this is an excellent

beginner level course with three huge

advantages first you're learning from

Google employees who are established

experts in the field of AI they know

what they're talking about and they're

not just some random person on the

internet who enjoys making crass jokes

second as a visual learner I'm amazed at

how they're able to use Simple Graphics

to explain complex topics for example

they analogize AI tools and AI models to

a car and its engine the model sleng

engine provides the underlying

capabilities while the tool like the car

helps you in completing the task third

the interactive elements are

surprisingly helpful the activities or

homework are well-designed in that they

actually help you learn a key concept

from that lesson the graded assignments

are also not that easy they're mainly

multiple choice but you actually have to

pay attention to get 80% and pass the

quiz last but not least the course

provides a curated list of AI tools for

beginners to explore and includes a

glossery of common AI terms that are now

prevalent in our daily lives to sum up

this course is great for beginners

visual Learners and can use the legit

certificate you get the end to attract

prospective employers and or Partners um

if you this video helpful you might want

to check out my summary of Google's free

AI course that's a bit more conceptual

but equally important in the meantime

though as

usual have a great one