Learn how to harness the power of artificial intelligence to transform your workflow with hands-on training in ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot. This course will teach you how to generate content, streamline tasks, and integrate AI into business communication, writing, analysis, and productivity tools.
Harness the creative power of AI with this hands-on workshop. Explore the cutting-edge world of artificial intelligence and learn how to generate text, ideas, and more with the innovative technology of ChatGPT.
Leverage the power of cutting-edge AI tools and features in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and other Adobe apps in this hands-on class.
Learn how to use generative AI to improve your video and motion projects. Create visual and audio assets, integrate AI tools into your daily workflow, and learn how copyright and data confidentiality work when using AI content.
Learn how to incorporate AI in your marketing strategy with this in-depth course. Explore how to use AI-driven tools to help your SEO, SEM, social media marketing, analytics tracking, paid advertising, and more.
Master AI technologies for business, marketing, design, data analytics, and more in this cutting-edge certificate program. In this program, you'll learn how to optimize Excel workflows, create stunning video content, create captivating graphics, analyze data efficiently, boost workplace productivity, and more with the power of generative AI.
Learn Python, SQL, automation, and machine learning to become a Data Scientist. Gain Python programming, data analysis, SQL querying, and predictive modeling skills. Perfect for beginners, this program prepares you for entry-level data science and Python engineering roles. Unlock high-paying job opportunities in the field of data science.
Gain practical skills in analyzing datasets, building predictive models, and creating AI-powered applications using Python and industry-leading tools.
Create, style, and enhance web apps with AI capabilities. In this advanced Python course, you'll develop a powerful sentiment analysis web application with Flask and the OpenAI API integration and learn how to take your coding projects to the next level with AI.
AI stands for artificial intelligence, a term that may well conjure up images of Asimovian robots or science fiction film stars Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet and the computer-gone-amok HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Contemporary artificial intelligence systems resemble HAL more than Robby in that they’re inside your computer rather than being clunkily moving humanoid metallic structures. Putting aside those simulations of artificial intelligence, the real artificial thing—computers that seem to think for themselves—has been around since the days of Robby the Robot. Alan Turing, the Computer Scientist and mathematician who is considered the father of AI, employed the term “machine intelligence” to describe the process of creating a computer possessing some form of intelligence that is comparable to the human kind.
Computers were beating humans at chess in the 1990s, and in the early 2000s, humans began regularly interacting with comparatively primitive artificial intelligence systems when speaking to disembodied voices on the telephone or when employing such now-everyday things as search engines or the recommendation algorithms that are part and parcel of using everything from Amazon to YouTube. In the 2020s, AI has become commonplace thanks to the advent of so-called generative AI, in which computers are able to “create” text, images, videos, and audio in response to everyday human language commands.
Platforms such as ChatGPT, Adobe Firefly, and Udio can perform truly remarkable tasks and have already proven to be game-changers across the business world. That may seem scary, but AI, however unregulated and ahead of itself ethically it may be, is here to stay. There’s no sense in pretending it doesn’t exist; the future is going to smile upon people who know how to make AI work for them.
Many people probably think that ChatGPT is there so eighth graders can get the computer to write their book reports on Animal Farm so they don’t have to tear themselves away from their video games to read Orwell’s very short novel. There are efforts underway to watermark AI-generated text, but, ironically, neither AI nor eighth-grade teachers are infallible when it comes to detecting AI-generated text. While ChatGPT can, indeed, write papers on Orwell, that’s underestimating its capabilities while making ethically questionable use of the platform. ChatGPT can be used to perform a wide range of useful and ethical business functions.
One much-suggested use of AI today is to get your creative juices flowing. You can ask it to give you the first three pages of the Great American Novel. Music-generating bots can compose the first thirty seconds of your next symphony. And image-generating AI can spit out an image you can subsequently tweak into the next De Sterrennacht.
That’s still only the tip of the iceberg, however. AI is perhaps at its most useful when used to automate wearisome tasks. You can have it choose an outfit, perform cost estimates, or even cast your community theater’s production of Entertaining Mr. Sloane. You can go through and correct an AI model’s decisions, and even get it to refine its choices in light of any additional parameters you may feed it. In many ways, AI is like a computer you can program in plain English (or French, Marathi, Malay, or even Albanian).
This is the number one skill required to operate AI, and it’s not as easy as you might think it is. While AI is, in a manner of speaking, intelligent, it’s not a very good mind-reader and needs to be told what to do in terms it can understand. As a rule, the more specific you are, the better your results will be. Certain commands are more effective than others, and you can use prompts to train the AI model further. What you put into the model is directly proportional to what you get back, which harkens back to the old computer adage GIGO: garbage in, garbage out.
As the buzz around generative AI today might suggest, the technology is good for more than writing book reports. It can also be used to accomplish dreary, dull, daily tasks, assuming you know how to get what you want out of it. You can, for instance, have an AI model create an entire exercise program for yourself and continually refine it to account for an injury or other changes. You can even design the GPT (the initials stand for generative pre-trained transformer) so that you can input reps and weights as you work through the program. Or, if you’d rather eat than exercise, you can have the GPT write out a shopping list based on recipes you feed into the machine. And, of course, office tasks can be automated by the same means, so that time cards, meeting notes, and cost estimates can become significantly less onerous.
Adobe’s Firefly makes a delightful toy. How can you resist something that can generate an image of three quokkas in pajamas eating a picnic breakfast on the field at Minute Maid Park during a game between the Astros and the Rangers with such adorable results? Amusing though that may be (and it is amusing), now imagine that you work for the advertising agency that represents a famous doughnut chain as it seeks to introduce its new mascot, Quispy the Quokka. Tweak your fun prompt, and you’ve suddenly got a useful advertising image you can (because it’s Adobe and it all goes together) edit using Photoshop or Illustrator into something that is sure to increase doughnut sales.
Machine learning, a form of AI, plays a central role in data science, where it’s used to automate and speed up repetitive tasks like data cleaning. You can also apply AI techniques on a somewhat less grand scale by using it to accelerate the more tedious tasks spreadsheets involve. AI can handle the manipulation, visualization, and analysis of data of all sorts, especially in cases of reports that need to be generated on a regular basis. You can hand the chatbot the new week’s doughnut data, and it will come up with a chart that will illustrate the meteoric success of Quispy the Quokka.
GIGO, garbage in, garbage out, means that computers function much better when they’re given the right kind of input. When you’re coding in a computer language, the syntax of the language dictates the tone you’re adopting when you’re issuing commands. With artificial intelligence and natural language processing, you’re issuing your commands in English or Albanian, which need to be succinct, clear, and unequivocal. Practicing putting your thoughts into terms that possess these virtues is unquestionably going to rub off on your use of language in general. You’ll get better at asking for exactly what you want and become aware of the nuances in what you’re saying. While AI can write for you, working with it will make you into a better writer.
Most of the generative platforms are designed so that, well, a lazy eighth grader can operate them. Not well, not efficiently, and with generic results at best, but if you can type in one of ChatGPT’s 95 languages, you can get generative AI to do something for you. To get something actually useful out of an AI model requires some study, since you can easily waste a lot of time writing clumsy prompts. That said, you can pick up the essentials of good prompt engineering in a few days. Mastery will take more time: when it comes to writing AI prompts, practice does indeed make perfect.
There are roughly three ways of learning a new skill these days. You can study synchronously in-person or online, or you can study asynchronously online. Synchronous is a fifty-cent word that means you and your instructor are working in the same moment in time and can communicate with each other. You can thus ask questions when you don’t understand something, and you can receive responses in real time. Asynchronous is the opposite of that: you’ll be learning from canned video presentations that allow for no interaction between yourself and the teacher—at least until they figure out time travel.
A synchronous class can unfold in one of two ways. You can either commute to a little red schoolhouse or connect to a virtual classroom. The first method hardly needs an introduction, as going to school to learn is the way you learned to learn, starting in kindergarten. The second is a more recent development, although it already dates back a couple of decades to the early days of public acceptance of the internet. True, you’re not inhaling the same oxygen as the instructor, but, on the other hand, you’ll be in your own space and much more able to look after your own comfort as you learn. In these circumstances, the dog can be a distraction, but many have come to prefer periodically shushing the family hound to commuting to a brick-and-mortar school. And, as live, in-person IT classes are about as rare as a 125°F steak, you may end up taking advantage of the far larger selection of live online courses.
Asynchronous classes are as abundant as asparagus in May, but this type of class comes with the enormous drawback of providing no contact with the instructor. The resulting impossibility of asking questions can prove extremely frustrating, to say the least. AI being a rapidly evolving field, the instructional videos on the topic that were recorded as recently as a year ago are already seriously out of date. All that said, if you can’t work a live class into your schedule, you may have no other option than an on-demand course for learning AI. You’ll certainly be able to learn something about the topic from one of these on-demand classes, but there’s no disputing the fact that you’ll be able to learn more from a live class.
Perhaps the most useful skills you can learn to complement your AI training are the ones that make it possible to work with the AI outputs you receive. Thus, if you’re working with AI images from Adobe Firefly and you don’t like the pattern of the pajamas Firefly put on your breakfasting quokkas, you can very easily use Photoshop to change it. Although it could well be a skill you already possess, knowing how to use Word is going to come in extremely handy when it comes to editing the text that ChatGPT produces for you. You can continue on down the line with audio and video software as well, depending on what you want to achieve with the platform you plan to use. You shouldn’t consider what comes out of AI as a finished product; you should be prepared at least to tinker with it, which, in turn, means knowing how to use software that allows you to do so.
AI is rapidly invading every corner of the American industrial landscape. Fields central to Houston’s economy—including healthcare, aerospace, and finance—are either already availing themselves of or are ready to avail themselves of the possibilities inherent in generative AI. Moreover, Houston is an evolving tech hub that includes companies that develop AI applications for other companies. And, although they hardly have the largest budgets for bringing in AI, not-for-profit organizations that depend on fundraising can gain a lot from generative AI as well.
One of the most prominent industries using AI is AI development itself—companies that design intelligent systems and deploy them across other sectors. Houston’s growing tech ecosystem includes firms such as Arundo Analytics, Data Gumbo, Cognite, and major players like IBM with a strong local presence. These organizations apply AI to optimize business workflows, industrial IoT systems, energy production, data analytics, and blockchain solutions. As Houston continues to diversify its economy beyond energy, AI development plays a key role in positioning the city as a center for advanced technology and innovation.
Texas Medical Center is the largest such complex in the world, and over 11% of Houston’s workforce is employed in the healthcare sector. Houston’s hospitals and doctors are making ample use of artificial intelligence. It is used in a wide variety of ways, ranging from the mundane—such as transcribing patient records or notifying patients of upcoming appointments—to reading test results, proposing treatments, and predicting patient outcomes. Healthcare is one of the fields that has most fully embraced AI, which is poised to transform the industry almost beyond recognition.
Aerospace and aviation are long-standing pillars of Houston’s economy, anchored by organizations such as NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin. AI is used for predictive maintenance, flight simulations, fuel optimization, and real-time monitoring of aircraft systems. Combined with technologies like virtual reality and 3D printing, AI helps engineers design more efficient aircraft and spacecraft. In commercial aviation, AI-powered chatbots and recommendation systems are also improving customer service, scheduling, and pricing strategies.
Thanks partly to its tax rate, Houston is one of the biggest financial centers in the country, and any financial organization worth its salt is likely to be using AI. AI has been used in the sector for a while (who doesn’t recall those highly unpleasant encounters with banking chatbots as recently as five years ago?), but the advent of generative AI is rapidly transforming the picture. Since AI can assimilate huge amounts of data, it can be used to make more precise recommendations with regard to loan approvals in a way not previously imagined by bank officers. Similarly, a chatbot can be developed to offer investment advice, and another can be designed to speed document verification and KYC (know your customer) protocols. In the insurance field, generative AI can be used for underwriting and even to facilitate claims resolution.
AI is not limited to corporate use. Houston-based not-for-profit organizations, including groups like United Way of Greater Houston, are using AI to automate administrative tasks, manage donor data, and predict fundraising outcomes. Through predictive modeling and generative AI, nonprofits can personalize donor outreach, optimize campaigns, and streamline operations—from accounting to social media management. These efficiencies allow organizations to focus more resources on their missions while maximizing fundraising potential.
If you’re not a programmer and have no interest in the coding side of AI, and if you want a fully live class that allows for ample human interaction, you’ll find in Noble Desktop’s Generative AI Certificate a program that amply suits your requirements. It teaches immediately useful applications of the new technology, beginning with ChatGPT and then expanding into classes in AI for marketing, graphic design, video, and motion graphics. You’ll then continue to learn how AI can be used to simplify tasks in Excel, and finally, for other data analytics purposes. No prior knowledge is required to join the course, which comes with a free retake (within a year) and recordings of all the classroom sessions to allow you to review material you may have missed the first time. Your instruction will be entirely live and online, meaning that you’ll be attending classes with a living, breathing, sentient, and helpful instructor who can answer questions along the way and guide you through a hands-on, learn-by-doing curriculum.
If the full Noble Desktop certificate program is more than you anticipate needing, each of the course’s modules is available separately. That means you can speedily get up to speed with the applications of AI to your particular field. All the benefits of the certificate program, including the retake option, are included with the individual courses. Everything is live and hands-on, with small class sizes and instructors experienced in these new technologies.
Few are the managers today who don’t wish their teams were adept at using AI. It’s today’s wave of the future, and AI competency is essential to staying current and competitive in just about any commercial venture. If you harbor these goals for your team members, Noble Desktop can well be just what you need. The school can arrange corporate training onsite at your premises or online, similar to the school’s regular classes, but tailored to your organization’s needs and the level of expertise your employees already have attained.
If you’d rather your team attend Noble’s regular classes, this is easily arranged with the school’s voucher program. Discounts are available for multiple purchases. Please do not hesitate to contact Noble’s corporate sales division for further particulars.