Generative AI is all over our newsfeeds lately, with stories about less than savvy AI chatbots or jokes about AI hallucinations. But what’s less obvious to many people is how we can actually use AI in our daily lives (beyond the jokes, that is). Google aims to fix that with a new online course called AI Essentials ($49), which will teach you how to use AI to help with everyday work tasks.
And Google makes big promises on this front, saying that using generative AI can help “help speed up daily tasks, make more informed decisions, and develop new ideas.” The amount to which AI might speed up your everyday workflow will vary depending on the kind of work you do, but there are a great many common tasks it’s good at. Generative AI can draft emails, summarize long documents and meeting notes, or help you create to-do lists or project plans. Getting good results, however, requires some know-how: your to-do list could be mangled if you don’t provide enough details, and you’ll want to double-check any emails that AI drafts for accuracy (and just to give it a personal touch). But used properly, there are plenty of mundane tasks you can offload to AI so you can focus on other things.
For example, at Techlicious, we use ChatGPT to analyze traffic data in Excel, perform initial proofreading on articles with Claude, and generate images for articles using Midjourney. And my colleagues have even used it for writing messages for bar mitzvah cards and condolence notes for friends and family.
Google’s AI Essentials course will help with that by teaching you the types of tasks AI can be used for and how to craft the perfect query to get the results you want. Plus, you’ll how to use this technology responsibly and stay on top of the latest developments – both crucial for using AI in the workplace.
Read more: Write Better and Faster with Chrome's Free AI Writing Assistant
Unfortunately, it isn’t free: participating will cost $49. However, it will help you develop useful professional skills, and you’ll earn a certificate from Google (which you can highlight on LinkedIn for potential employers). It’s a good start for building AI knowledge, which is likely to become increasingly important. for both our personal and professional lives.
You can sign up for the AI Essentials course now on Coursera to fast track your AI skills.
[Image credit: Conceptual rendering by Techlicious via Midjourney]
Elizabeth Harper is a writer and editor with more than a decade of experience covering consumer technology and entertainment. In addition to writing for Techlicious, she's Editorial Director of Blizzard Watch and is published on sites all over the web, including Time, CBS, Engadget, The Daily Dot and DealNews.
