Homework — Glossary, cheat sheet, and next steps

The final homework. Three reflective tasks and one mini-project suggestion.

This is the final lesson of AI for Dummies. The homework here is intentionally reflective rather than technical. There's no code to write and no solution to check. The goal is to consolidate what you know and make a concrete decision about what to do next.

Task 1 — The elevator pitch

Imagine you're in a lift with someone who just heard the word "AI" on the news and asks you: "Wait, what actually is AI? Is it really going to take everyone's jobs?"

Write a 60-second spoken answer. No jargon. No hedging. No "well, it depends." Be honest, be concrete, and end with one thing they should do this week to see it for themselves.

Tips for a good answer:

Start with what AI is in one sentence (not what it can do).
Give one concrete example they've definitely encountered (spam filters, phone autocomplete, Netflix recommendations).
Acknowledge the job question honestly — don't dismiss it, don't catastrophise.
End with an action: "Go to claude.ai and ask it to explain your next meeting agenda."

Self-check: Read your answer out loud. Does it take under 60 seconds? Would a non-technical friend nod along or glaze over? If the latter, cut more jargon.

Task 2 — Your personal AI audit

Look at the last week of your life — work, personal, creative, or otherwise. Identify three tasks where you used AI, tried to use AI, or could have used AI but didn't.

For each task, answer:

What was the task?
Did AI help, fail, or get in the way? Why?
What would you do differently next time?

One of the three should be a case where AI made things worse — gave you wrong information, a generic output, or something you had to redo entirely. That's not a failure. That's calibration. The goal is to know where AI is worth using and where it's not.

Self-check: Are your "next time" answers specific? "I'll write a better prompt" is not specific. "I'll add the format constraint and a worked example" is specific.

Task 3 — Pick one thing and commit

Look at the 4-week path on the Theory page. Look at your current checkbox state. Identify the single next action you haven't done yet and write it down as a commitment with a specific date:

"By [date], I will [specific action]."

Examples of specific commitments:

"By Friday, I will install Ollama and download the Llama 3.2 3B model."
"By next Tuesday, I will write a Python script that calls the Claude API and summarises my last five emails."
"By Sunday, I will finish the chatbot from Lesson 8 and show it to my partner."

The rule: if you can't finish the action in under two hours, it's too big. Break it in half.

Self-check: Does your commitment have a specific date and a specific, observable outcome? "Get better at AI" is not a commitment. "Run the Hello World example" is.

Mini-project idea — Build your own "AI for Dummies" explainer

This isn't a task to submit — it's an invitation. The best way to test whether you really understand something is to try to teach it.

Here's the idea:

Make a one-page "AI starter guide" for someone in your life who knows nothing about it. It could be a parent, a younger sibling, a colleague from a non-technical department, or a neighbour. Tailor it to them specifically.

It could be:

A single printed page (use the cheat sheet from Theory as a starting point).
A short voice memo where you explain the top five things they need to know.
A 10-minute screen share where you walk them through claude.ai live.
A Google Doc you write together.

The constraint: it must be genuinely useful to that specific person, not to you. If it works for you but they still look confused, it doesn't count.

Why this matters: teaching forces you to confront every spot where you sort-of understand something. You'll find three or four gaps you didn't know you had. That's the point.

You finished AI for Dummies. Ten lessons, from "what even is an LLM" to local models, the API, building a bot, and thinking about safety. You have the vocabulary, the habits, and the tools to go wherever curiosity takes you next. The Theory page has the glossary, cheat sheet, and links whenever you need them. Now go build something that didn't exist before you started this course.