Online Hands-on Workshop on Generative AI Tools and Prompt Engineering Essentials-Dec 2024

The explosion of interest in generative AI (GenAI) such as ChatGPT has created a need for prompt engineering expertise to optimize practitioners’ interactions with GenAI and enable them to take advantage of the many powerful capabilities of this technology in all areas of their practice. However, the prompt engineering skills are still not widely covered. This professional development workshop is an opportunity to learn about prompt engineering to meet a variety of objectives.

Registration Information

  • To be held ONLINE on Wednesday, December 18, 2024 10:00 am – 3:00 pm (EDT) with a break from noon - 1 pm.
  • The registration fee is $200 (+HST) includes all materials.
  • This workshop qualifies for 4 hrs of CPD credit.
  • Discounts available:
    • 25% discount to Professional Association Members (CPA Canada, ISACA Toronto Chapter, IIA Canada) with submission of Association Name and Membership Number
    • 50% discount to Academics with submission of the name of Institution and role
    • 100% discount to students - subject to availability - discount code required - request discount code from J. Efrim Boritz

Co-sponsored by

Auvenir logo

Format/Structure of the Workshop

A combination of presentations by workshop leaders, hands-on exercises and open discussion will be used. Participants will need to bring laptops or other devices suitable for downloading and reading web-based content.

The workshop leaders are involved in exploring and applying AI techniques in both academic and consulting settings. Thus, they can provide extensive and up to date coverage of these topics.

What’s it all about?

This workshop will cover both simple and complex prompt engineering approaches for addressing a variety of issues of interest to workshop participants; for example: word search; term frequency and concordance reporting; entity recognition and extraction; document similarity measurement; dictionary-based classification; unsupervised clustering classification; supervised machine learning classification; topic modelling; and sentiment analysis.

Who should attend?

This workshop is primarily aimed at practitioners who are interested in applying GenAI in their areas of interest. However, educators and students could benefit as well.  

What past participants have said

The workshop kept me up-to-date with the recent AI world and encouraged my use of different AI products in the coming months. I can recommend your workshop to my colleagues.

Practitioner

The workshop exceeded my expectations. I left feeling more empowered to structure assignments for students in the fall semester after more practice.

Academic

An excellent workshop. Having worked with ChatGPT on a few programming tasks, I think every student should know something about prompt engineering.

Phd Student

Monday’s course was great - good balance of intro concepts and exercises to get a taste of what GPTs can do. Certainly met my expectations.

Practitioner

Learning objectives

This hands-on workshop will highlight the use of both simple and complex prompt engineering approaches for (1) reducing cognitive load, (2) enabling delegation, and (3) facilitating faster task execution of tasks that include:

  1. First Drafting
  2. Communication
  3. Data-to-Documentation
  4. Deliverable prep and polish
  5. Summarization
  6. Brainstorming
  7. Research
  8. Extract and assemble

After completing this workshop an attendee will be able to:

  • Describe the capabilities of GenAI software.  
  • Explain procedures used in prompt creation. 
  • Evaluate prompts and their results. 
  • Consider risks (e.g. hallucinations, confidentiality, etc.) when using GenAI.
  • Identify opportunities for automation using GenAI.

Advance Preparation

You will need to download some data and software if you wish to participate in the hands-on exercises. Before the workshop, attendees will complete a brief questionnaire to identify workplace challenges where Generative AI could add value.

Workshop materials will be made available to registrants in advance.

You will need to subscribe to ChatGPT to fully participate in the hands-on aspects of the workshop. We will also be demonstrating Claude, for which the free version should be suitable.

Of course, if you prefer to simply watch the demos, you can do that too.

Please contact J. Efrim Boritz if you need any assistance.

Instructors

The workshop will be facilitated by Malik Datardina and Efrim Boritz.

Malik Datardina headshot

Malik Datardina

Malik Datardina, CPA, CA, CISA, is the Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) Strategist for Auvenir. At Auvenir. Malik analyzes disruptive trends and technologies such as generative AI, blockchain, and big data to build the audit platform of the future.

He also wears the GRC hat, where he handles risk and compliance issues. Malik has a wealth of knowledge in the innovation space, exploring the impact of both innovation and exponential technologies on the profession, and has authored professional publications on the topic.

His two decades of experience, encompassing audit innovation, audit data analytics (ADAs), risk, and security governance, further enrich his contributions in these areas.

In addition to his work at Auvenir, Malik is actively involved in professional development and has worked with CPA Canada, CPA Ontario, CPA New Brunswick, and other professional bodies. He also shares his knowledge and experience with the next generation of CPAs as a lecturer in the University of Waterloo's Master of Accounting program.

J. Efrim Boritz

J. Efrim Boritz

Dr. J. Efrim Boritz, FCPA, CISA is the Ontario CPAs’ Chair in Accounting in the School of Accounting & Finance at the University of Waterloo, Canada. He is also the founding Director of the University of Waterloo Centre for Information Integrity and Information Systems Assurance.

Dr. Boritz is the author or co-author of numerous books, monographs, book chapters and articles in academic and professional journals and has served on numerous editorial boards. His research focuses on professional practice in external and internal auditing, particularly in the context of information systems, with the goal of enhancing professional judgment through better quality information, models and processes.

Dr. Boritz has served on numerous task forces and committees of domestic and international professional and academic associations. He is a former president of the Canadian Academic Accounting Association which has given him all three of its major teaching, research and service awards. The Council of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ontario gave him its highest award, the Award of Outstanding Merit in 1999. In 2010 he received the Candian Institute of Chartered Accountant’s Bill Swirsky Innovation Leadership Award and in 2012 he received the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal. In 2023 he was inducted into the Canadian Accounting Hall of Fame. He is a member of the AICPA’s Information Integrity, Trust Services and Cybersecurity Working Groups. A complete resume is available at https://uwaterloo.ca/school-of-accounting-and-finance/people-profiles/efrim-boritz