Foundations of Generative AI

1.5 credits · College of Connected Computing - Professional

Technical foundations for strategic engagement with AI tools, accessible to professionals from all backgrounds. Transformer architectures and reasoning models; context engineering and prompt design; the Agent Skills specification as both technical standard and organizational tool for non-technical builders; Model Context Protocol for tool integration; the architectural shift to domain-expert-authored skills that make general-purpose agents ultra-specialized on demand; portability of Skills across language models; evaluating AI capabilities and vendor claims; multi-agent system patterns; trajectory of AI development and adoption timing. Students create and deploy functional Agent Skills capturing domain-specific workflows. Synchronous online with asynchronous components. [1.5]