A course unlike any other AI course
This course is built on a wager it then asks you to test: that the most important thing a university can give you in the age of AI is not information — the machine has that — but formation: judgment, taste, the durable human skills, and the answerable choice of what is worth building.
"What are we doing here — and what will you accomplish at IE with the AI tsunami at large?"
We open with that question and spend ten modules answering it by walking the walk. The campus survives the perfect AI tutor by becoming the forge — and this course is the forge with a project inside it.
Two sides of one coin
Every module has both sides, by design — never one without the other:
◐ The Mind — AI Mindset & Broadview (Edo). A lecture built on the [YOU] on AI worldview, two chapters of the book with a focus question, one explicit mindset objective, and a reflective assignment that makes you take a position.
◑ The Build — Tool Set Practice + Team Project (Ikhlaq). Hands on the tools that week — the twins, co-intelligence prompting, your first agent, workflow debugging, evaluation — and a concrete step on your team's project, from three candidate problems all the way to Demo Day.
The two sides interlock: the module that teaches the candle (what only humans originate) is the same module where you sketch your AI factory and decide where the human checkpoint lives. Theory of mind, then the action of building — every single week.
The mindset: You on AI
Before any tool, a reframe. Five shifts run underneath everything you'll do in this course. Hover or tap a card to flip it.
Intelligence isn't inside you. It's around you.
Before → NextYour worth used to be what you knew. Now it's how well you think with the intelligence around you — not for you, not without it.
Don't make the shoe. Make the factory.
The industrial-revolution moveIt never rewarded the fastest cobbler — it rewarded whoever built the factory. Don't just solve the problem. Set up the AI factory that solves a thousand.
Your network of people is now a network of agents.
Old power → new powerOld power was who you knew. New power is the fleet of AI agents you can make, direct, and trust. You build your first one in Module 3.
Stop doing the work. Start directing the intelligence.
Before → NextIt used to be: manage people, learn skills, do the task. Next: guide and direct intelligence toward impact. You move up a level.
AI is an amplifier of you — for better and worse.
The amplifierIt magnifies whatever you bring — your care or your carelessness — at scale, and rewards the entrepreneur-minded most. So: are you worth amplifying?
Course description
[YOU] on AI + X is a cross between three things: Edo Segal's worldview from the book (AI as the most powerful amplifier ever built — "are you worth amplifying?"); Ikhlaq Sidhu's innovation method, drawn from the Berkeley Method of Entrepreneurship and Data-X; and a hands-on AI project — the X — that forces you to practice all of it. It is roughly half mind and half build: an advanced, highly applied project course where you ideate in the first half and iterate to completion in the second.
Every module runs three lanes, in the Data-X format:
- AI Mindset & Broadview — the mind. The [YOU] on AI ideas (river & beaver, the candle, friction & flow, the Luddites, the software death cross) with two chapters of the book and one mindset objective per module.
- AI Tool Set Practice — the build, hands-on. Just-in-time technique: the digital twins, prompting as thinking, Agent 0, the factory workflow, observability and debugging, evaluation and reliability.
- Team Project — the build, for real. A diverse team, a track you choose, and a project that moves every module: problems → NABC story → factory prototype → progress reviews that tour the room → Demo Day.
The reading ladder — all 20 chapters
Two chapters per module, paired so the idea you read is the idea your build needs that week. By Demo Day you'll have read the entire book — as equipment, not homework.
What you'll learn
- To answer, for yourself, what you are for in the age of AI — and to build something that proves part of the answer.
- To define and execute what, why, and how to build a real-world AI artifact, in a team, from problem discovery to Demo Day.
- To design and run AI factories — agents and workflows with roles, inputs, repeatable actions, and human checkpoints — and to test, observe, and debug them like an engineer who owns them.
- The new human + innovation skills: curiosity, motivation, critical thinking, grit, emotional intelligence, comfort with discomfort, and trust.
- Judgment — to tell scaffolding from substitute, plausible from true, the demo from the product, and the genuinely new from the merely fluent.
Project tracks — choose your X
Build a venture
An AI-enabled product or service for a real user/market. You'll go from a one-line story to a working AI factory and a pitch that lands. Maps to lean-startup + the Business Model Canvas.
Investigate the unknown
Use AI to chase a real question — gather and analyze evidence, run an inquiry, and produce a finding that survives your own evidence audit. Research at ten times the speed, with the judgment to know what's true.
Make something that moves people
A film, a design, a piece of writing, an app, a public-good tool. Use AI as your instrument and your judgment as the artist — and prove the human is still the author. (Social-impact builds welcome here.)
The human-skills thread
Each module's mind side forges one human/innovation skill — taught through Berkeley-Method games, engineered discomfort (the Candle Question is the canonical one), and structured reflection. Progress is graded on its own rubric, not folded invisibly into the project grade. Tap each to expand.
Companion platform & digital twins
The course ships with an AI-agentic companion platform. Each student works with digital twins of Edo and Ikhlaq — AI mentors grounded in the book, the Berkeley Method, and this corpus — that hold office hours at 3am, pressure-test ideas, and run assignments customized to each student's project and growth. In Module 1 you meet them and practice AI in all its roles: tutor, coach, teammate, tool, simulator, student.
It carries the full [YOU] on AI text, the Berkeley Method & Data-X materials, the [THEM] on AI library and the AI Field Guide (10,000+ entries) at youonai.ai — all queryable by your twins.
Assessment & grading
No curve. Commitment over prior expertise — grit matters more than where you start. Both sides of the coin count: the mind work (reflections, evidence audits, the disclosure log) and the build work (the factory, the milestones, Demo Day). The bars below fill as you read.
Policies
Staff & office hours
| Role | Name & contact | Office hours |
|---|---|---|
| Faculty | Edo Segal — edosegal@gmail.com | By appointment + after class |
| Faculty | Ikhlaq Sidhu — Dean, IE School of Science & Technology | By appointment + after class |
| Coach | Agentic harness development coach (TBD) | TBD |
| AI twin-mentors | Edo & Ikhlaq digital twins (companion platform) | 24/7, on the platform |
Syllabus and schedule are subject to change. Bracketed items (dates, IE email, GSI) are set per offering.