Real-Life.AI
The news is full of stories about Artificial Intelligence - its impact on jobs, privacy, copyright, the environment...
If your organisation needs to understand what AI is, what it can do, and how you can get real-life value out of it, I can help.
AI Workshops
Want to know what ChatGPT is, and how it can help you write better emails, research a topic or put together a marketing plan?
Or maybe your team is already using AI tools, but needs to understand potential pitfalls like bias and inaccurate/fake source data, or regulatory concerns?
Contact MeWorkshop topics
Honestly, we could spend an hour on each of these topics. But few people have that kind of time!
I’ll work with you to select the most useful topics for your team, and adjust how much time we spend on each. Together we’ll create an effective hour — or 90 minutes — that covers the concepts you want, incorporating your organisation’s AI goals and guidelines (even if those are just “Don’t get us into trouble using this AI stuff”).
“Artificial Intelligence” research dates back to WWII, but AI truly became mainstream with ChatGPT’s debut in 2022. Now companies are throwing billions at AI.
To kick things off and inspire you with “the art of the possible,” I’ll demo some AI tools that anyone can use, but were just a dream even a couple of years ago.
As with all these topics, this one is optional. But rather than treating AI as a magical black box, it helps to have some idea how it comes up with its answers (or images, or music, or...), so you can ask it better questions. Don’t worry; we’ll keep it high-level.
Get AI tools like ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude and Gemini working for you to help improve productivity and enhance creativity. Anyone can ask these tools a basic question, but how you phrase your request makes a big difference to the quality and reliability of the response. And some tools are better for certain tasks.
Participants get more out of the session if they bring their laptops/tablets and try these techniques themselves. A 90-minute workshop (rather than 60) is suggested to allow time for this, including “show and tell” of what they produce.
If you already know that “Help me buy a shirt” is a vague and rather ineffective question to ask AI, then let’s up our game even further. Try out “Deep Research.” Maybe get a panel of AI “experts” to advise on your marketing plan, or critique your CV or presentation. Or have AI help you plan a trip for people with different needs and interests, including real hotel and activity recommendations. Perhaps even automate some of your routine tasks with an AI assistant/agent.
A 90-minute workshop is recommended to allow time for participants to practise applying what they’ve learned.
Some occupations — even some well-paid Finance jobs — are definitely at risk of being automated away.
So is AI coming for your job? We review economists’ and other smart people’s predictions, and look at what employers are saying about the importance of AI skills for their current and future employees.
AI can do amazing things, but it’s not all good news.
We’ll delve into how AI can perpetuate biases, confidently state false information as fact, “hallucinate” bizarre responses, leak your private data to the internet, infringe copyright, and more. And we’ll discuss practical ways to mitigate these problems — so that participants leave knowing how to protect sensitive data and spot AI errors before they cause real damage.
Governments around the world are scrambling to catch up to advancements in AI. While I’m not a lawyer, I can provide an overview of existing and upcoming AI regulation, and how it might affect you.
Also if you already have AI policies, compliance or audit programmes in place, let’s remind participants what they cover and where to find them.
Want some tips on how to get useful output out of image generators like Nano Banana, or video generation tools like Veo 3 and Sora? How about using AI to create data visualisations of your existing PDFs, spreadsheets and presentations? I’m happy to help wherever I can — let’s talk!
About
I have over 30 years of IT industry experience, working for companies in the UK, Canada and the US such as Oxford Properties, Reuters, British Telecom, Rogers Communications and Symantec. Throughout my IT career, I’ve always played a key role as a bridge between Business users and Technology — translating user needs into effective software and systems.
I’ve also worked in television, and I 3D-design and market cufflinks at Lahosky.com.
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I spend a huge amount of time reading about and studying AI - so that you don’t have to.
Click the button below to learn more about my AI and IT certifications.
My LinkedIn ProfileTestimonials
It was good to understand the importance employers are placing on AI. It was also interesting to understand reasons why AI can go wrong/not work properly. The depth of each topic was right - gave us enough without it becoming too technical.
Thank you very much for the workshop and for follow-up and Post-AI materials. You took the time to understand our “pain” and gave us very useful insights. We’re already looking into your NotebookLM recommendation, I believe it will solve many of our challenges.
We all found it very interesting, and especially eye-opening amongst us rookies to AI. Liked the practice exercises - need a bit more time for them, as people want to share their creations with each other.
Everything was very helpful, loved seeing the outputs from the various tools, as it got me thinking on how I might use them better. The chat prompts were great... I think this is what the average individual might get the most use out of in their day to day job. Really appreciate you taking the time to walk us through AI.
I learned several new things, especially about the different AI functions and interfaces. I found it particularly valuable to understand how various AI tools can be applied in different contexts.
The pace was excellent overall, with everything progressing at a comfortable speed that allowed ample time to understand the concepts before moving on. The session could be a bit longer, perhaps 90 minutes, and more time for hands-on practice would be helpful.
I had no idea there were other useful tools to use beside Chat GPT so it was handy to hear about other generative AI sources out there. The videos that you can create and podcasts were absolutely fascinating (and also somewhat terrifying too..!)
Maybe an hour and a half is best, so it leaves time for demos and questions.
Impressive, Allan. This is quality content and training. Looking forward to Part II or updates in the future!
This was fantastic. The benefits of AI are unreal. This workshop was full of great information from the positives to negatives of AI.
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