Basics of AI for Business: Practical, Safe, Immediately Useful
A practical, human-first introduction to AI for Australian businesses. Learn what AI can do reliably, where it can go wrong, and how to use it safely for everyday tasks like writing, summarising, planning, customer responses, and basic workflow automation.
Description
AI is already showing up in the tools you use but most teams don’t have a consistent, safe way to use it. This workshop cuts through the noise and gives you clear, practical foundations for using AI at work responsibly.
You’ll learn the basics in plain English, see real business examples, and practise a simple method to apply AI to your own workflows. We’ll also cover essential guardrails: privacy, sensitive information, accuracy checking, and how to keep humans in control.
You’ll leave with reusable prompts, a safe-use checklist, and a simple 30-day pilot plan so AI becomes a helpful habit not a risky experiment.
Course Topics
- AI in plain English: what it is (and what it isn’t)
- Where AI helps most in business: quick wins and high-impact use-cases
- Prompting that works: getting useful output without “prompt engineer” complexity
- Summarising documents, meetings, and notes (without losing meaning)
- Drafting emails, proposals, policies, and customer responses in your brand voice
- Basic “AI quality control”: accuracy checks, bias checks, and safe assumptions
- Privacy & sensitive information: what not to share and safer ways to work
- Workflow mapping: where AI fits and where humans must stay involved
- Identifying automation candidates (low-risk, high-return tasks)
- Pilot planning: choosing one safe experiment and measuring results
How Will This Course Help You
- Save time on repetitive writing and admin tasks
- Improve consistency and quality in customer and internal communication
- Reduce risk by learning practical privacy and accuracy guardrails
- Build confidence to trial AI without confusion or overwhelm
- Create a realistic plan to introduce AI with your team (not just as a personal tool)
- Leave with templates you can reuse immediately
Objectives
By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:
- Explain AI clearly to colleagues and stakeholders
- Apply AI to at least 3–5 real workplace tasks with a repeatable method
- Write prompts that produce clearer, more accurate outputs
- Identify tasks suitable for AI support vs tasks that must remain human-led
- Use a simple checklist to reduce errors, hallucinations, and “overconfidence” in outputs
- Set basic team guardrails for safe, responsible AI use
- Draft a 30-day pilot plan with measures of success
Prerequisites
- No technical background required
- Bring a laptop (recommended)
- Bring one real work task you’d like to improve (e.g., email templates, reporting, customer FAQs, planning docs)
- Basic comfort using web-based tools is helpful, but not essential
Who Can Enrol
- Small business owners and operators
- Managers and team leaders
- Admin/operations teams
- Marketing, sales, and customer service staff
- HR/people & culture professionals
- Educators and community organisations (where relevant)
- Anyone new to AI who wants practical, safe foundations
Why this Program Stands Out
- Human-first: focuses on augmentation, not replacement
- Practical: built around real workflows and repeatable methods
- Responsible by design: privacy, trust, and quality control included (not tacked on)
- Australia-relevant: examples and risks aligned to local expectations and workplaces
- Take-home assets: prompts, checklists, templates, and a pilot plan you can actually use
- Interactive: not a lecture — participants build something during the session
Why You Should Enrol
If you’ve been curious about AI but unsure where to start — or worried about risk, accuracy, and privacy — this workshop gives you the essentials in a clear, hands-on way. You’ll leave knowing what to use, what to avoid, and how to implement AI safely so it genuinely helps your business (and your people) from day one.
Trainer
Ria Verma & Lukas Nilsson – Problem Solved Group
Ria and Lukas are a rare “dream team” pairing: Ria makes AI practical for real people and real workplaces, and Lukas brings a clear, current view of what AI can actually do and how to apply it without the hype. Together, they cover what most workshops miss: how to adopt AI in a human-friendly way, and how to make smart decisions in a field that’s changing week by week.
Ria brings the clarity, structure, and business-first thinking: how to choose the right use cases, reduce overwhelm, and turn AI into something your team can use confidently. Lukas brings the technical depth as a computer scientist and software engineer: he tracks the latest capabilities, explains what’s real versus what’s marketing, and translates that into simple, workable approaches teams can use immediately.
When you attend Ria & Lukas’s workshops, you’re not just learning concepts. You’re learning how to think about AI clearly: what to use, what to avoid, and how to implement it in a way that’s safe, practical, and easy to sustain. Expect a supportive, hands-on environment, real examples, and a focus on outcomes: less time wasted, clearer processes, and smarter use of AI that still feels human.
Read more about Ria, Lukas, and our other trainers here