Welcome to the Technology Evaluation Team
Summit Workplace Solutions just hired you as a junior member of its Technology Evaluation Team. Your first assignment: help the company figure out what artificial intelligence actually is — and when it belongs in the workplace.
The situation at Summit Workplace Solutions
Several departments have proposed new "AI" tools. But in your first team meeting, you noticed a problem: people keep using the word "AI" for things that are really just ordinary software, and some are assuming AI can safely make every decision by itself. Your team's job is to bring clarity before the company spends money and takes on unnecessary risk.
Essential question
How can a workplace recognize artificial intelligence and decide when it is appropriate to use?
Estimated time
About 50 minutes, in 8 steps. Your progress is saved automatically, so you can pause and come back.
What you will be able to do by the end of this lesson
- Define artificial intelligence in plain language.
- Distinguish AI from traditional rule-based automation.
- Identify common workplace uses of AI.
- Explain that AI generates outputs from patterns and data, not human understanding.
- Determine when human oversight is necessary.
- Recommend whether AI, traditional automation, or a human decision is the right fit for a task.
What actually makes something "AI"?
Read each short explanation, then flip the vocabulary cards to check your understanding. This part is practice — it is not graded.
Traditional automation follows fixed rules
Traditional automation runs on an algorithm: a fixed set of instructions a person wrote in advance. "If the inbox receives an email from this address, move it to this folder." The software never changes its own rules and never handles a situation the programmer didn't anticipate.
AI learns patterns from data
Artificial intelligence (AI) is software that produces useful outputs by finding patterns in training data rather than following a fixed rule a person wrote for every case. During machine learning, a system is shown many examples and gradually builds a model — a mathematical structure that captures the patterns it found. Give the trained model a new input and it produces an output: a prediction, a classification, or in the case of generative AI, new text, images, or other content.
AI does not "understand" — and it can be wrong
A model's output is a statistical best guess based on patterns, not comprehension. That's why human oversight — a person reviewing, approving, or overriding an AI's output before it affects someone — matters most in situations with real consequences: hiring, health, discipline, money, and safety.
Vocabulary check (practice)
Click a card to flip it and see the definition. Flip through all 10 before continuing.
0 of 10 cards flipped.
Activity 1: AI or Not AI?
Summit's department heads submitted a list of tools and processes. Sort each one into the correct category. Use "Check my work" as many times as you like — it will tell you what's right without giving away the rest. When you're confident, submit for your final score.
For each item, choose whether it is: Artificial Intelligence, Traditional Automation, or Neither (a human judgment task).
Activity 2: Inside an AI System
A department head asked, "What actually happens inside one of these AI tools?" Put the six stages in the correct order to explain it. Click a stage below to add it to the next open slot; click a placed stage to send it back.
Correct order (fill top to bottom)
Available stages
Activity 3: Workplace Tool Evaluation
Five Summit departments each proposed a new tool. For each, decide what kind of solution actually fits: AI, traditional automation, or primarily human judgment. Then explain your reasoning for one of your decisions in the box at the end.
0 characters (minimum 40)
Activity 4: Human Oversight Challenge
Summit is piloting AI in five sensitive areas. For each scenario, identify the biggest risk and choose the human oversight step that best addresses it.
Activity 5: Final Knowledge Check
A mixed set of questions covering everything from this lesson.
Reflection & Completion
0 characters · 0 sentences detected (need at least 2)
Your results so far
Total: 0 / 100
Lesson complete
Verification ID:
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