Is it the Real World, or is it AI? An Entrepreneur’s “101” Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

As a small business owner, manager, or employee, there’s so much you need to keep up on – so when do you have time to learn how to use AI? Today is the day!

You’ve heard plenty about Artificial Intelligence being a “game changer” across industries – but what does that mean for your day-to-day work? How does that look when helping small businesses level the playing field?  We asked ourselves these questions – and more! – and did some investigating.

In this beginner-friendly session, join an SBDC “AI Explorer” – who specializes in working with entrepreneurs and small businesses – to discover practical ways AI can support your business – without the jargon or hype. Instead of focusing on specific tools, we’ll discover how to approach solving problems using AI in a small-business context. The frameworks we’ll cover are designed to grow with you – whether you’re writing a simple prompt or coding a much more complex AI super-agent.

In this “AI 101” session, we will:

• Demystify the AI landscape– from Large Language Models (LLMs) and AI chatbots to agents and super agents – and share what to watch for if “the tool is free.”
• Teach simple, repeatable frameworks for deciding when, how, and if you should use AI in your business.
• Explore prompt engineering basics so you can get better results from AI tools (and suggestions for improving prompts when something goes wonky!)
• Demonstrate a “human-in-the-loop” workflow to understand how to best use AI as a collaborator – and how to choose the best “player” for different tasks!

You can leave this session with sample prompts to try, tools and resources to explore, and the confidence to embrace being an AI Explorer – starting today!