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AI ACADEMYTHE LEARNING STUDIO

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Use AI to learn AI

Find a problem worth solving

LESSON 01 / 06 ACTIVITY 01 / 08

Course guide · outcomes, syllabus & finishing your work

Build your business

Start with the people you want to serve. Learn to test an offer, deliver it well, and use AI where it earns its place. Bring a new idea or a business you already run.

The work you will leave with

A testable business plan: customer evidence, a bounded offer, delivery economics, a customer experiment, and a checked AI workflow.

Before you start

No prior AI experience is required. You need to read a short scenario and record or explain a response; a facilitator or peer can support reading and writing. Use a phone, computer, or the printable lesson pack. No purchase or AI account is required for the core course. Optional account saving and AI coaching have separate sign-in and usage requirements.

Time and pacing

145–180 minutes of estimated lab practice across six lessons. These are planning estimates, not measured learner averages. Allow additional time for reading, decision checks, revisions, and optional fieldwork. Try one lesson per session; pause and resume at any activity.

By the end, practice demonstrating these outcomes

  1. 1. Find a problem worth solving

    Describe one reachable customer, a recurring problem, and the evidence you still need.

    Lab estimate: 25–30 minutes of practice; optional customer conversations take additional time.

  2. 2. Make an offer that can work

    Define a bounded service and calculate what remains after delivery costs and your time.

    Lab estimate: 25–30 minutes of practice; estimates need later checking against actual work.

  3. 3. Test how you will reach customers

    Design a small, truthful acquisition experiment with a clear budget and learning question.

    Lab estimate: 20–25 minutes to design the test; any real outreach happens separately with permission.

  4. 4. Deliver well before automating

    Produce and inspect one complete sample using explicit acceptance criteria.

    Lab estimate: 25–30 minutes for a practice delivery and review.

  5. 5. Give AI a job you can evaluate

    Test a limited AI workflow and document when a person must take over.

    Lab estimate: 25–35 minutes for a small test set; additional tool trials may take longer.

  6. 6. Run the business and decide what comes next

    Use a simple operating review to continue, change, or pause with a defensible reason.

    Lab estimate: 25–30 minutes to integrate the plan and defend a next decision.

What finishing means here

  1. Try the AI creation task in each lesson: edit a prompt, inspect live drafts if you sign in, or analyze the authored examples. Record what you checked and what improved. Live model use is optional.
  2. Make an independent artifact for each lesson using the changed scenario.
  3. Review each artifact against the lesson criteria. Record evidence or a revision needed, then explain one change in your reflection.
  4. Attempt all 18 decision checks, read the feedback, and revisit choices you cannot yet explain.
  5. Complete the final application and assemble your course artifact. Ask a peer or facilitator to challenge its facts, reasoning, and limits.
  6. Export your work and choose one bounded next use. Revisit a key decision the following day without the example.

The course tracks work recorded, not mastery. Authored answer feedback supports practice; written artifacts need human judgment. Self-review, reaching the last screen, or filling every field does not earn an IHA certificate or establish business results.

Save and return

Use “Your work” to save on this device, export a backup, or optionally save to an account. On a shared device, consider an exported file instead. Return to this pathway and choose “Resume saved work”; account work loads through “Your work.” Device saves include your activity position. A paper learner can use the same outcomes and criteria.

Explore this lesson · Activity 1 of 8

Your first AI learning experience 1 of 4

What would you like to make possible?

Start where you are. You’ll practice asking for an explanation, checking a claim, and improving an instruction. No technical background needed.

Choose an example to begin with

This choice changes your example and starter instruction. You can change it here; it does not create a separate course or save a profile.

Need the concept or a reference?

Describe one reachable customer, a recurring problem, and the evidence you still need.

In this course, AI means a tool that can generate or transform material such as text from patterns learned during training and the information supplied in a task. A model is the underlying system; a chat app is one interface to it. A prompt is your instruction, and context is the source information available for that response. Generating an answer is different from searching a current source or taking an action through a connected tool. Do not assume those capabilities are present. We will use AI for bounded drafts and comparisons while you decide what is accurate, useful, and appropriate. Every exercise can begin on paper with the supplied fictional material.

Start with people whose work or daily life you understand. A useful business solves a specific problem for someone who can choose to pay for the solution. “Everyone needs AI” is too broad. “Local event organizers repeatedly correct inconsistent event details across flyers and social posts” gives you a person, a task, and a problem to investigate. The person doing the work may be different from the person approving a purchase.

Ask about the last time the problem happened: What were you trying to do? What went wrong? What did you do instead? How much time did that take? Who decides whether to buy help? Listen before explaining your idea. A compliment or a hypothetical “I would buy that” is weaker evidence than a recent example, an existing workaround, or a concrete next step. Record what someone actually said separately from your interpretation.

Look at alternatives, including doing nothing, doing the task themselves, and hiring someone without AI. Your advantage might be clear communication, accessibility, local knowledge, or dependable delivery. AI can help organize notes and suggest follow-up questions, but its imagined customer personas are hypotheses. They cannot establish demand. Remove names and private details before using interview notes in a tool.

Choose a small next investigation you can afford. Three conversations can reveal useful questions; they do not prove a market. If real conversations are not available, practice with a partner and label the record as a role-play. An honest unknown is more useful than an invented customer quote. You can move through this pathway with a clearly labeled practice case while planning how to gather real evidence.

Short example

Synthetic example: Nia is exploring an event-information service for neighborhood organizations. In a fictional practice interview, an organizer describes correcting three different start times on event materials. Nia writes “inconsistent source information causes rework” as a hypothesis. She still needs to learn how often it happens, who approves spending, and whether a shared template already solves it.

Questions to ask yourself

  • Can I name a specific person or organization type I can realistically reach?
  • Which statement is observed, and which is still an assumption?
  • What evidence would make me change my idea?

Watch for: Treating an AI-generated market report or friendly encouragement as proof that people will pay.

Optional prompt for a tool you choose

Help me examine this business hypothesis. Ask one question at a time about the customer, buyer, recent problem, and existing alternative. Separate evidence I provide from assumptions. Do not invent interviews, statistics, or demand. Here is my anonymized hypothesis: [insert].

Ask the AI learning coach

Optional AI support

Ask Sage Learning

Ask for a hint or feedback on your draft. AI feedback can be wrong. Check it against the source and review criteria; it does not award a grade or credential.

Sign-in and your existing AI allowance apply. What you send goes to the AI provider and is saved in your Sage Learning conversation history. Use fictional or permitted, non-sensitive material. Nothing is sent until you select the button below.

What would help?