Everyday AI · Module 1

Understand the job an AI assistant is doing

Suggested time: 5 minutes.

Artificial intelligence, or AI, is a broad term for computer systems that perform tasks such as recognising patterns or generating text. Generative AI produces new content in response to an input. In this course, the content is ordinary written text.

A prompt is the instruction or question you give the assistant. It can include material you want it to work on. A response is what the assistant produces. A conversation may contain several prompts and responses.

For example, you could provide three rough notes and ask the assistant to rewrite them as three clear bullets. The notes are the source material. “Rewrite these as three clear bullets” is the instruction. The resulting bullets are the response.

AI can be useful for drafting, shortening, rewriting, grouping ideas and extracting information from text. These tasks are especially manageable when you already have the facts and can compare the response with them.

Producing a readable answer does not establish that its contents are true. A language model can produce plausible wording that includes a wrong date, an invented explanation or a reference that does not exist. This is often called a hallucination. A confident tone is not evidence. OpenAI describes these limitations in its guidance on whether ChatGPT tells the truth (https://help.openai.com/en/articles/8313428-does-chatgpt-tell-the-truth).

Worked example

Fictional source:

“Room requested. Venue has not confirmed.”

Weak response:

“The venue is booked and preparations are on track.”

The sentence is fluent, but both claims go beyond the source. A request is not a booking. “On track” is a judgement that the note does not establish.

Better response:

“The room has been requested; venue confirmation is still pending.”

This keeps the useful information and preserves the uncertainty. It does not make the update less professional. It makes it more accurate.

Pause and notice: The assistant can change the wording. It cannot turn an unconfirmed fact into a confirmed one by writing confidently.