We may earn an affiliate commission when you visit our partners.
Course image
Merve Hickok

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems can have a range of impacts on both business and society. In “Generative AI: Impact on Business and Society,” you’ll consider the social and technological aspects of these systems to evaluate how they may impact the way we adopt, trust, or work with these tools. This course builds on your knowledge of the benefits, challenges, and potential risks of AI as we begin integrating these tools into our organizations or communities. It includes considerations relevant to business operations, impact on consumers, as well as wider implications for citizens, public safety, and the environment. By the end of this course, you’ll be able to evaluate the global and local implications specific to generative AI systems for informed decision-making in your role.

Enroll now

What's inside

Syllabus

Introduction to the Course
Informed Choices: Mitigating Generative AI Risks in Business
Generative AI's Societal Impact: A Critical Overview
Read more

Traffic lights

Read about what's good
what should give you pause
and possible dealbreakers
Offers an overview of the societal impact of generative AI
Examines the business implications of generative AI
Provides strategies for mitigating risks associated with generative AI
Taught by Merve Hickok, an expert in generative AI
Requires no prior knowledge of generative AI
Covers the ethical implications of generative AI

Save this course

Create your own learning path. Save this course to your list so you can find it easily later.
Save

Reviews summary

Strategic overview of generative ai's impact

According to learners, this course offers an excellent, timely resource for understanding Generative AI's profound implications. Students highlight its ability to expertly balance business strategy with crucial societal considerations, making complex topics accessible and engaging. It's particularly well-suited for professionals and leaders seeking a conceptual foundation rather than technical depth. While largely positive, some recommend including more diverse real-world case studies for actionable insights, but agree it provides crucial knowledge for navigating the evolving tech landscape and strategic decision-making.
Geared towards strategic understanding rather than technical depth.
"It's more conceptual than technical, which suited my needs as a non-developer."
"I would recommend it for anyone needing a conceptual foundation, but not for those seeking technical details."
"I found the course equipped me with the right questions to ask and areas to consider, rather than deep dives into technical aspects."
Tailored for managers, leaders, and decision-makers.
"Highly recommend for any professional seeking to navigate the future of AI."
"Absolutely essential for anyone in a leadership role."
"A must-take for any leader or policy maker. The discussions are highly practical for strategic decision-making."
Effectively covers both enterprise and broad societal impacts.
"It expertly balances business strategy with societal considerations."
"The focus on both business and societal aspects is a strength."
"It illuminates the dual nature of Generative AI – its immense potential and its significant challenges."
Provides current and essential insights into Generative AI.
"This course is an excellent, timely resource for understanding Generative AI's implications."
"Absolutely essential for anyone in a leadership role. The course clarifies the profound changes GenAI will bring..."
"Outstanding. This is crucial knowledge in today's rapidly evolving tech landscape."
Could benefit from additional real-world examples and strategies.
"Some parts felt a bit high-level, and I wished for more diverse case studies..."
"It felt a bit too theoretical at times for my practical needs. I was hoping for more specific use cases."
"My only minor critique is that some discussions could be expanded with more real-world examples."

Activities

Be better prepared before your course. Deepen your understanding during and after it. Supplement your coursework and achieve mastery of the topics covered in Generative AI: Impact on Business and Society with these activities:
Review foundational AI concepts
Refresh your understanding of AI models, algorithms, and techniques before starting the course to enhance your comprehension of generative AI.
Browse courses on Deep Learning
Show steps
Create a digital notebook for course content
Organize and consolidate your course notes, assignments, and resources in a digital notebook for efficient review and future reference.
Show steps
  • Choose a digital note-taking app
  • Create a dedicated notebook for the course
  • Import or transcribe your notes and materials
Experiment with generative AI tools
Explore various generative AI tools to solidify your understanding of their capabilities and limitations, and to gain hands-on experience with text generation, image synthesis, and other applications.
Browse courses on Generative AI Tools
Show steps
  • Sign up for different generative AI platforms
  • Experiment with different prompts and inputs
  • Analyze the outputs and identify patterns
  • Compare and contrast the tools based on their strengths and weaknesses
Two other activities
Expand to see all activities and additional details
Show all five activities
Develop a case study on a generative AI application
Apply your knowledge of generative AI systems to a specific real-world scenario, solidifying your understanding of their potential impacts and considerations.
Show steps
  • Choose a specific industry or application area
  • Research and identify a relevant case study
  • Analyze the impact of generative AI on the case study
  • Develop recommendations for leveraging generative AI
  • Present your findings in a written or presentation format
Build a generative AI model
Challenge yourself to design and implement a generative AI model from scratch, giving you hands-on experience with the underlying algorithms and techniques.
Browse courses on Generative AI Models
Show steps
  • Choose a specific generative AI task
  • Gather and preprocess your dataset
  • Select and configure an appropriate model
  • Train and evaluate your model
  • Deploy your model and evaluate its performance

Career center

Learners who complete Generative AI: Impact on Business and Society will develop knowledge and skills that may be useful to these careers:

Reading list

We've selected 50 books that we think will supplement your learning. Use these to develop background knowledge, enrich your coursework, and gain a deeper understanding of the topics covered in Generative AI: Impact on Business and Society.
The definitive benchmark textbook of modern artificial intelligence, rigorously unifying search algorithms, probabilistic reasoning, knowledge representation, and machine learning into an elegant, coherent agent-based framework.
The premier applied machine learning masterwork, taking practitioners through intuitive concept breakdowns, production-grade Scikit-Learn workflows, and deep neural architecture implementations.
A timeless mathematical masterpiece that provides an uncompromising Bayesian and probabilistic foundation for linear classifiers, graphical models, kernel methods, and sampling algorithms.
A monumental foundational text establishing the mathematical, algorithmic, and statistical principles of modern deep neural networks, from linear algebra and optimization to convolutional and sequence modeling architectures.
The definitive mathematical and theoretical canon of statistical learning, establishing the rigorous analytical foundations of regularized regression, tree ensembles, and high-dimensional inference.
A distilled practitioner field guide outlining best practices for the entire machine learning lifecycle, from problem formulation and feature engineering to model deployment and monitoring.
Guides engineers step-by-step through implementing, training, and fine-tuning complete generative transformer architectures in pure PyTorch, providing crystal-clear low-level insight into modern foundation models.
Delivers an end-to-end systems architecture guide for building reliable production ML systems, addressing data engineering trade-offs, real-time feature computation, and model drift mitigation.
Presents the foundational treatise on Markov decision processes, temporal-difference learning, and policy gradient methods that underpin autonomous decision-making and modern post-training alignment workflows.
Rumelt dissects the core of good strategy, distinguishing it from generic goals or buzzwords. is excellent for gaining a broad understanding of what constitutes effective strategy and is highly recommended for students and professionals alike to clarify their strategic thinking. It helps solidify an understanding of the fundamental principles.
Written by Nobel laureates, this book uses empirical evidence to understand the economic lives of the poor and inform effective anti-poverty strategies. It's crucial for developing a nuanced understanding of the challenges in achieving social impact in the context of poverty. It can serve as a textbook for undergraduate and graduate courses focusing on development economics and social impact measurement.
Bridges linear algebra, multivariable calculus, vector geometry, and probability directly to fundamental machine learning algorithms like PCA, Gaussian mixture models, and support vector machines.
Considered a foundational text in the field of impact investing, this book explores how capital can be used to generate both financial returns and positive social and environmental impact. It's essential for understanding the financial mechanisms and market-based approaches to social impact. key reference for professionals and students interested in impact finance.
Provides a practical guide to using generative AI, covering the different techniques and tools available. It is written by two leading experts in the field, Josh Patterson and Adam Gibson.
Explores the ethical implications of advances in science and technology. It thought-provoking and challenging read that will change the way you think about the future.
Classic introduction to ethics. It clear and concise overview of the major ethical theories.
Provides a clear and compelling overview of impact investing, showcasing how it can be a powerful tool for addressing global challenges while generating financial returns. It offers a practical guide for investors and organizations looking to engage in this field. It's a valuable resource for understanding the potential of market-based solutions for social good.
Instructs data scientists on applied model evaluation, cross-validation, hyperparameter tuning, and pipeline construction through Scikit-Learn maintainers Andreas Müller and Sarah Guido.
Provides a foundational understanding of social entrepreneurship, a key component of social impact. It explores how social entrepreneurs identify and solve systemic problems, making it highly relevant for those new to the topic. It's often used as a core text in academic settings and offers a framework for understanding large-scale social change efforts.
Demystifies practical transformer model implementation through the Hugging Face ecosystem, demonstrating how to fine-tune, optimize, and deploy attention architectures across diverse natural language processing and understanding tasks.
Presents a framework for creating new market spaces, known as "blue oceans," rather than competing in existing, crowded "red oceans." It's highly relevant for understanding innovation and differentiation in business strategy. It is valuable for both students and professionals looking to explore new avenues for growth.
This collection compiles some of the most influential articles on strategy published in the Harvard Business Review. It offers a diverse range of perspectives on key strategic concepts from various thought leaders in the field. It serves as an excellent overview of essential strategic thinking and is valuable for both broad understanding and deeper dives.
This handbook offers a comprehensive overview of the theory and practice of social impact assessment (SIA). It's a valuable reference for understanding how to measure and manage the social consequences of projects and policies. is particularly useful for practitioners and researchers in fields like environmental studies, sociology, and planning.
Nobel laureate Amartya Sen argues that development should be seen as the expansion of human capabilities and freedoms. provides a foundational philosophical perspective on the goals and meaning of development, which is highly relevant to the broader concept of social impact. It classic text in development studies and political economy.
Delivers battle-tested operational patterns for serving foundation models, addressing GPU cluster throughput, semantic caching, automated evaluation benchmarks, and continuous latency minimization.
Drawing on extensive research and case studies, this book outlines principles and practices for achieving deep and lasting social change by understanding and working within complex systems. It's a valuable resource for those seeking to create transformative impact. It can be used as supplementary reading for advanced students and practitioners.
This recent publication comprehensively explores the essence of social impact within organizations and society, including its definition, measurement, and implementation. It examines how organizations integrate social impact into their core functions and provides empirical evidence of practices across various sectors. is valuable for gaining a contemporary academic perspective on social impact.
Investigates the engineering realities of running automated ML pipelines in production, addressing data drift detection, automated retraining loops, telemetry infrastructure, and continuous validation.
Details an applied architectural methodology for running high-performance open-weights models on local workstations, tackling quantization fidelity, memory bandwidth limits, and prompt assembly trade-offs.
Based on the strategic approach used at Procter & Gamble, this book offers a practical guide to developing and implementing strategy. It's a valuable resource for understanding how strategy is put into action within an organization. is useful for both students and working professionals seeking actionable strategic frameworks.
Details cloud-native DevOps architectures for orchestrating automated machine learning lifecycles, integrating CI/CD triggers, model registry synchronization, and automated hyperparameter sweep workers.
Offers a rigorous theoretical foundation for reasoning under uncertainty, combining graph theory and probability distributions to model complex high-dimensional dependencies across autonomous intelligent systems.
A clear and accessible introduction to systems thinking, this book is invaluable for understanding complex problems and how interventions can have unintended consequences. It provides essential mental models for anyone working to create change in social or environmental systems. is highly recommended for developing a critical approach to social impact work.
Introduces core computational linguistics concepts and practical tokenization, tagging, and syntactic parsing workflows through clear Python examples, establishing strong fundamentals for language analysis.
This highly visual handbook introduces the Business Model Canvas, a widely used tool for designing, understanding, and innovating business models. It is particularly useful for students and entrepreneurs in providing a framework for analyzing how businesses create, deliver, and capture value. is often used as a practical guide and reference.
Hamel and Prahalad introduce the concept of 'core competence' and argue that companies should focus on building and leveraging these core capabilities to shape their future and the future of their industries. provides a forward-looking perspective on strategy and innovation. It valuable read for those thinking about long-term strategic vision.
Introduces the principles of effective altruism, a philosophy and social movement that advocates using reason and evidence to find the most effective ways to benefit others. It challenges readers to think critically about how to maximize their positive social impact. This book is particularly useful for those interested in rigorous evaluation and data-driven approaches to doing good.
Challenges conventional philanthropic practices and urges a shift towards a more equitable and healing approach to wealth redistribution, drawing on Indigenous wisdom. It's essential for a critical understanding of power dynamics and historical context in the social impact space. This book is important for anyone involved in philanthropy and social justice work.
Synthesizes the five foundational tribes of machine learning into a unified conceptual framework, illuminating how symbolists, connectionists, evolutionaries, Bayesians, and analogizers approach intelligence.
The authors argue that there is no single best approach to strategy and provide a framework for choosing the right strategic approach based on the environment. is relevant for understanding the contingent nature of strategy in today's dynamic world. It's suitable for students and professionals dealing with complex business environments.
Presents the foundational treatise on Markov decision processes, temporal-difference learning, and policy gradient methods that underpin autonomous decision-making and modern post-training alignment.
This academic work addresses the critical and contemporary ethical and social implications of artificial intelligence and digital technologies. Given the increasing role of technology in society and social impact initiatives, understanding the ethical frameworks is crucial. This specialized text suitable for advanced students and professionals in technology and social impact.
Treacy and Wiersema propose three distinct value disciplines that companies can pursue to achieve market leadership: operational excellence, customer intimacy, and product leadership. offers a framework for understanding different strategic positioning options. It is useful for identifying and focusing on a core competitive advantage.

Share

Help others find this course page by sharing it with your friends and followers:

Similar courses

Here are nine courses similar to Generative AI: Impact on Business and Society.
Deep Learning for Business
Most relevant
Introduction to Generative AI
Most relevant
Demystifying GenAI: Concepts and Applications
Most relevant
The AI Awakening: Implications for the Economy and Society
Most relevant
Introduction to Generative AI Studio - Français
Most relevant
Generative AI: Fundamentals, Applications, and Challenges
Most relevant
Building AI-Powered Application with .NET
Most relevant
Getting Started with Generative AI: Unboxing the Future
Most relevant
AWS Certified AI Practitioner AIF-C01 - Hands On, In...
Most relevant

Coursera Buyer Protection & Guarantee

Verified partner policies & purchase protections

Accredited University Partner
Free Trial & Audit

7-Day Free Trial & Free Audit

7-day free trial on monthly Coursera Plus subscriptions; free audit option available on most individual courses to explore video lectures and readings at no charge.

Return & Refund Policy

14-Day Refund Guarantee

14-day refund window on annual Coursera Plus subscriptions and single-course purchases prior to certificate issuance. Monthly subscriptions do not offer refunds once billed.

Buyer Protections

Verified Academic & Industry Partner

Accredited university and industry certifications (e.g. Stanford, Google, IBM, Yale), secure SSL payment processing, and verifiable digital certificate links.

Key Purchase Protections
14-day refund window on annual Coursera Plus and single courses
7-day free trial on monthly Coursera Plus subscriptions
Free course audit option for lectures and readings
Verified certificates from top universities & companies
OpenCourser Verified Partner Policy details last reviewed: 2026-10-22
Our mission

OpenCourser helps millions of learners each year. People visit us to learn workspace skills, ace their exams, and nurture their curiosity.

Our extensive catalog contains over 50,000 courses and twice as many books. Browse by search, by topic, or even by career interests. We'll match you to the right resources quickly.

Find this site helpful? Tell a friend about us.

Affiliate disclosure

We're supported by our community of learners. When you purchase or subscribe to courses and programs or purchase books, we may earn a commission from our partners.

Your purchases help us maintain our catalog and keep our servers humming without ads.

Thank you for supporting OpenCourser.

© 2016 - 2025 OpenCourser