An Introduction to GenAI Workshop

The ‘Introduction to GenAI’ online workshop, co-organised by WP2 and Digital TAG and presented by Dr Mike Harfoot, offered a hands-on introduction to Generative AI (GenAI) — what it is, why it’s important, and how it can be used in creative, research and analytical work. Participants, who had a wide range of prior experience (averaging 3.7 out of 10, where 10 is an expert user), got hands-on with tools like Gemini and MistralAI, testing out how these systems generate responses.

We briefly explored how GenAI works behind the scenes, then moved into the basics of prompting and prompt engineering (the art of asking AI the right questions to get useful answers) and finished by reviewing the risks that come with use of GenAI, including hallucinations (made-up facts), data privacy issues, and environmental impacts.

Through practical activities and then some insightful questions, we tried to look at ways to get better results: writing clear prompts, checking and verifying outputs, and thinking critically about how to use AI responsibly. Discussion often revolved around the need to treat AI-generated content with care and ethics in mind. A key question for the LUNZ project was raised about the use of GenAI in providing guidance to policymakers, something it would be good to explore with the project team.

Hopefully, the session gave everyone a chance to experiment, try tools out and share ideas, setting the foundation for making more use of GenAI’s potential (where appropriate) in future LUNZ events.