AI Foundations
No slides. No lectures. You drive, I ride shotgun. By the end of this hour, you'll have solved a real problem with AI.
First — select your industry
All examples and exercises will be tailored to your world.
Today's Class Plan
Here's what we'll cover in the next hour.
How This Works
This isn't a course you watch. It's a skill you build.
You Bring
A real problem from your business. Something you'd actually use. The messier the better — we're not here for toy examples.
We Build
By the end of each session, you have an artifact. Something that works. Something you'll use after this call ends.
The Mindset Shift
Google way: Type keywords → scan results → click links → maybe find something useful
AI way: Ask like you'd ask a smart colleague → get an answer → push back until it's exactly right
This Is Class 1 of Alpine Foundations
You're doing the self-guided version. The full program goes much further.
Alpine Academy teaches you to use AI the way experts do — not through theory, but through building. You leave with skills, artifacts, and a fundamentally different relationship with technology.
For now — keep going. The rest of this class covers push-back technique, research vs. reasoning, and structured prompts.
Your First Real AI Conversation
Time to actually use it. Open ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini in another tab and work through this with a real problem from your life or business.
Here's what to do
Pick a problem below — something real you'd actually use the answer for.
Copy the starter prompt into ChatGPT or Claude. Fill in the blanks with your details.
Save what works. Paste your best prompt and output into the notes below.
New Venture Research
You're launching something new — a product, service, or initiative. Use AI to accelerate the research and positioning.
Improve What's Working
Something in your business works but it's manual or messy. Get AI to build a tool or document you can use tomorrow.
Clear the Backlog
What's been sitting on your to-do list? A vendor email? Product descriptions? A process to document?
Paste in the prompts that worked, the outputs you liked, and what you pushed back on. This is your reference.
Push Back
That first answer? It's a draft. The skill is knowing how to make it better. Do at least 3 rounds.
Common Push-Backs
"Too generic." → Make it specific to premium products, not budget.
"Too long." → Give me the top 3, not a wall of text.
"Wrong tone." → Write it like I'd explain to a business partner.
"Missing context." → I'm selling to camp directors who buy in bulk.
Click to mark each round complete. Don't settle for the first answer.
Research vs. Reasoning
This is the thing most people get wrong on day one. Understanding this changes everything.
The Hard Truth
When you ask ChatGPT a question, it doesn't go out and research the answer. It reasons its way to something plausible using patterns it learned during training. That's not the same thing.
It's not intelligent. It's not thinking for you. It's finding the quickest way to stitch together a few things that make sense and give you an answer.
The risk: if you take this as gospel, you might base your next business decision on machine-based assumption instead of actual intelligence.
You ask: "What regions should I target for children's bedding?"
What happens: It thinks "cold + rich = buy bedding" and builds an answer from that logic. No data. No research. Just plausible-sounding reasoning.
You ask: "Search recent Amazon sales data and social media trends for children's bedding by US region."
What happens: It goes and looks at actual sources, pulls real data, and reports what it found. Specific. Verifiable. Useful.
The Three Layers of "AI"
Everything called "AI" today falls into one of these buckets. Knowing which one you're using changes what you should expect.
before you ask the question.
Think of it like briefing a new hire: who are you, what's the job, what should you avoid, and what does the deliverable look like?
Spot the Difference
Click each response to reveal whether the AI researched it or reasoned it.
The Habit
Every time AI gives you a factual claim, ask yourself: did it look this up, or did it figure it out? If you can't tell, ask it: "Where did you get that?"
Before & After
Watch a basic prompt transform into one that actually works. Click an example below.
Homework
Do these to lock in what you learned. Check them off as you go.
Solve another real problem
Pick something from your business. Screenshot what worked.
Push back 3+ times
Refine until it's actually good. Document the progression.
Catch it reasoning vs. researching
Ask it something factual. Can you tell if it looked it up or made it up? Push back: "Where did you get that?"
Use AI for 5 real tasks
Emails, research, descriptions — whatever comes up this week.
The habit to build:
Complete the homework above and keep building the habit. The more you use AI, the better you get at it.
