Foundations of Generative AI for Business

This unit introduces core concepts, model types, and practical workflows for applying generative AI in business and finance contexts. Students learn prompt fundamentals, human–AI collaboration, provider evaluation, basic technical setup, and responsible use practices to prepare for more advanced applied projects in subsequent units.

Learning Objectives

• Analyze core differences between discriminative and generative AI, including common architectures (e.g., language and diffusion models) and their business-relevant capabilities and limitations
• Apply effective prompt-design and multi-model combination techniques to produce, summarize, and refine business-focused content and outputs
• Evaluate GenAI providers and enterprise versus consumer tools against business criteria such as data privacy, scalability, model performance, cost, and compliance
• Demonstrate responsible GenAI workflow setup by installing basic tools, retrieving sample market data, and documenting ethical considerations, attribution, and bias-mitigation strategies