Overview
Generative AI is at its best on the writing you already have to do: summarizing dense material, drafting and polishing documents, and translating between languages. This session covers how text generation actually works at a high level, then puts it to work on study guides, resumes, and language practice.
Learning objectives
- Explain, at a conceptual level, how an LLM generates text one token at a time.
- Use AI to summarize, rewrite, and translate real documents.
- Write effective prompts: context, task, format, and iteration.
- Judge when AI drafting helps — and when it gets in the way or crosses academic-integrity lines.
Session agenda
- 6:00 – 6:10Warm-up
Homework debrief: which chatbot did you pick and why?
- 6:10 – 7:15Lecture: Text generation, summarization, translation
How next-token prediction becomes useful writing; prompt structure; live demos on real documents.
- 7:15 – 7:25Break
- 7:25 – 9:00Lab: Build your productivity kit
Create a study guide from your own course notes, draft or improve a resume, and try AI-assisted language practice.
- 9:00 – 9:10Wrap-up
Trade one prompt that worked well; preview images, audio, and video.
Materials
- Notes or a document from another class (for the study-guide lab).
- A current resume, if you have one — or a job posting you like.
- Companion reading: Elements of AI, Chapter 5.
Homework
Use AI to produce a study guide for a class you are taking now, then annotate it: mark three places the AI was genuinely helpful and one place it was wrong or generic.
Detailed slides, lab worksheets, and demos for this session are in progress and will be posted here before class.