AI Literacy

AI is embedded in nearly every tool you use — but most people have no idea when it's helping them, misleading them, or quietly shaping what they believe. AI Literacy is a practical, no-fluff course that turns you into a sharp, skeptical, and capable user of artificial intelligence. You'll learn to detect deepfakes, evaluate AI-generated content, write better prompts, and recognize how bots and algorithms influence public opinion — including your own. This course is built for adult learners who want more than surface-level familiarity: you'll walk away with the critical thinking framework and hands-on skills to engage with AI confidently, whether you're using it for work, research, or everyday life. If you want to be the person in the room who actually understands what AI can and can't do, this is where you start.

AI Is Everywhere — Can You Trust It? From search results and news feeds to writing assistants and customer service chatbots, AI is generating more of the content you consume than most people realize. AI Literacy starts by mapping that landscape — giving you a clear-eyed picture of where AI actually lives in your daily life and why that matters. You'll move past vague awareness and into something more powerful: a concrete understanding of how these systems work, what they're optimized to do, and where they routinely go wrong. This foundation reframes how you engage with every AI-powered tool you'll encounter going forward.

Spotting What's Fake One of the course's most immediately practical units focuses on detection. You'll learn how to identify AI-generated images and deepfake videos by examining the telltale artifacts these systems leave behind — inconsistencies in lighting, texture, anatomy, and context that trained eyes can catch. More importantly, you'll develop a repeatable process for approaching unfamiliar media skeptically, so you're not dependent on any single detection trick that tomorrow's models might outpace.

Evaluating AI-Written Answers — Including Your Own Large language models like ChatGPT are remarkably fluent — and remarkably willing to be wrong. This course teaches you how to read AI-generated text critically, spot confident-sounding errors, and cross-check outputs before you rely on them. That includes content you've prompted yourself: you'll practice reviewing and pressure-testing your own AI-assisted work so it meets a real standard, not just a plausible-sounding one. These skills apply whether you're using AI for research, writing, analysis, or professional tasks.

Asking Better Questions Getting useful output from AI tools is a skill — and it starts with how you ask. You'll learn the principles of effective prompt construction: how to provide context, set constraints, specify format, and iterate when results miss the mark. Beyond the mechanics, you'll develop an instinct for what to ask — how to use AI as a thinking partner rather than an answer machine, and how to recognize when a tool is the right instrument for the job at all.

Bots, Influence, and How to Push Back AI isn't just a productivity tool — it's also infrastructure for large-scale influence. This course takes a hard look at how social media bots and algorithmically amplified content shape what we believe, who we trust, and how we vote. You'll study real patterns of bot behavior, learn how coordinated inauthentic campaigns operate, and practice the habit of asking tougher, more specific questions before accepting what a feed or a search result is telling you. By the time you finish, you won't just be a smarter AI user — you'll be a harder person to mislead.