This course provides an introduction to AI Technologies available and gives practical examples of how these tools and techniques can be used in real-world situations today. The skills gained will open up programming as a tool for non-programmers. AI assistants like ChatGPT and CoPilot are able to write code, so if you can clearly describe what you require and are able to interpret the results you can now utilise programming as a tool. Participants will gain knowledge of the new skill of "prompt-engineering" which is learning how to phrase your interactions with AI tools. The course will primarily focus on using ChatGPT but the techniques can be adapted to other AI assistants like Copilot and many others.
Prerequisites
This course will focus on how to use AI assistants in your daily work. No experience with AI is expected. The course can be tailored to any programming language including Python, C#, Java and JavaScript.
Introduction
Introduction to ChatGPT and its capabilities.
Terminology
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Neural Network
Natural Language Processing
Large Language Model
Prompt Engineering
Using AI For Programming
Setting up the development environment.
Working with APIs and SDKs for ChatGPT.
General Principles
Provide clear and specific descriptions
Use language specific keywords
Be explicit about logic
Use comments
Check and test the output
Break down complex tasks
Ask for explanations
Review and edit
Data privacy concerns
Prompt Engineering Techniques
Being specific
Task
Context
Exemplar
Persona
Format
Tone
Introduction to programming using AI
Review of the coding environments that we will be using
Creating a "hello world" program using an AI assistant
How to interpret the results
Basic Programming Tasks
Prompt the AI assistant to solve more difficult problems.
Interpreting the results
Cut and paste the code
Compile and run the code
Testing the code
Debugging
Validating your results
What to do when things don't work out
Debugging techniques
Breakpoints
Single Step
Evaluating variables
Step Into and Step Out
