How can we separate the wheat from the chaff?
New technologies are often either overhyped or undervalued. Together, we will uncover where AI is truly creating value— and where it is likely to be at best overkill, or at worst, downright harmful.
This class has been designed to present the cutting edge of AI in a way that can be practically applied in business contexts, especially for new startups and innovation.
A 4-Day Intensive Bootcamp in AI
Day 1
Foundations
of AI
Understand the economic and technical fundamentals that underly both discriminative AI and generative AI technologies
Day 2
Infrastructure
Plays
Learn from industry leaders how to pioneer AI infrastructure, focusing on agentic systems, model deployment, interpretability, and safety
Day 3
Industry
Plays
Learn from industry leaders how to capture value through industry-specific applications, focusing on consumer goods, law, finance, and biotech
Day 4
Putting AI
to Work
Experience real-world AI in action in the Bay Area and put your skills in building LLM-powered applications to the test
Course Highlights
Lectures and Guest Speakers
Guest speakers from venture capital, technology, and creative arts will provide a real-world introduction to AI applications and innovations. These will be combined with short theoretical lectures with clear, concise takeaways.
30% of grade
Small Group Exercises
Complete a series of well-structured exercises designed to give you hands-on experience working with LLMs
30% of grade
Final Project
Throughout the week, you will work on a group-based assignment to design a prototype of a real business product leveraging generative AI tools across all development stages. Final class will involve a live demo showcasing your product in action.
20% of grade
Final Essay
A final individual reflection that connects the product to broader class themes.
20% of grade
Who is this class for?
You want to understand the fundamentals of generative AI systems and converse with technical specialists
You want hands-on experience building LLM-powered applications to generate business value in your own work
You want to identify use cases ripe for AI disruption, and strategize how to design products and services to generate value
You want to understand what has enabled current AI startups to succeed and the challenges & opportunities ahead
Who is this class not for?
You want to master the mathematics behind neural networks or transformers
You want to conduct specialized research to advance the state-of-the-art AI
You want to write complex code to design or train your own foundation models
You want to use AI to improve your day-to-day productivity