Innovation Profs - 4/4/2025

Welcome to the Friday edition of the Innovation Profs newsletter. Look for us in your inbox every Tuesday with the latest news in generative AI and on Fridays to focus on making you more productive with generative AI. Let’s get started…

We’re all coders now

The other day I made a Tic Tac Toe game that is supposed to tell you the optimal move to beat the computer. I also made a game where you are a dog on campus at Drake University trying to catch squirrels while avoiding running into students (see if you can beat my high score of 48 points).

If you are wondering where I got my coding skills, I didn’t. I vibe coded both games.

If you ever wanted to learn to code but never got around to it, vibe coding is the trend for you.

Generative AI, it turns out, is pretty good at writing code, and that's the idea of vibe coding. Users simply describe what they want created, and tools such as Cursor and Lovable and Claude Artifacts do the coding for them.

If you don't like the results, ask for something different. If your code isn't working, tell it to fix itself. You don't have to ever write - or even look at - a single line of code.

NEW! Sign up for our April 23 Vibe Coding Lunch Club event.

Many use AI code assistant Cursor to write their code. They don't even type, instead using a tool such as Wispr Flow to speak what they want done. You can even ask for help seeing a live version of the site or app being built if you're not sure how to do that.

The idea of vibe coding was introduced by A.I. researcher Andrej Karpathy, formerly of OpenAI and Tesla:

If you want a super simple way to dive into this, try out ChatGPT Canvas, Gemini Canvas or Claude Artifacts.

If you want a step up, try Lovable, Replit or Bolt.

This was the topic in our Gen AI class this week. We will share some examples of what our students built in the Tuesday newsletter.

Upcoming events

AI in Law and Policy Lunch Club
When: 12:30-1:30 p.m. Central April 9
Where: Virtual on Zoom
Cost: $20
The aim of this session is to give a broad overview of a range of legal issues pertaining to generative AI, ranging from the local level, informed by the latest developments at the intersection of AI and law/policy. Sign up now.

Copilot Deep Dive Workshop
When: Noon-3 p.m. April 11
Where: Virtual on Zoom
Cost: $200
Do you have access to Microsoft 365 Copilot, but you have not had time to explore everything you can do with the AI tool? This hands-on workshop is for you. We will walk you through how to use Copilot in Outlook, Teams, Powerpoint, Excel and more. Sign up now.

Intro to Vibe Coding Lunch Club
When: 12:30-1:30 p.m. Central April 23
Where: Virtual on Zoom
Cost: $25 early bird price through April 11
Attendees will learn about vibe coding, a new trend in generative AI where people are able to code projects with little to no coding skills by simply describing what they want to create. Sign up now.

Generative AI Mailbag

This week’s question: How do I learn more about using Generative AI?

Answer: We assume you mean besides attending our upcoming education events. OpenAI recently announced OpenAI Academy to give people the tools to harness artificial intelligence effectively. It includes live events and replays of live events.

Do you have a question about generative AI? Submit it by replying to this email or sending an email to [email protected].