Building business apps with AI

Catalog description

Artificial intelligence, and large language models in particular, is reshaping how organizations build and use software. Managers who understand how to conceptualize new applications and to utilize AI in application development will have a lasting competitive advantage, regardless of their functional specialization. The advantage goes even further if the applications embed AI as well. This course teaches students with no prior programming experience to use the support of AI to design and build working business applications that optionally embed AI functionality. The first half of the course builds the technical foundations: Python programming, web application architecture, relational databases, and how large language models work. The second half is a guided build project in which each student (or pair) designs, builds, and presents a fully functional AI-powered application. By the end of the course, students will have shipped real software and will understand, from direct experience, what AI can and cannot do reliably.