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This work considers the use of AI and parallelism as a context for learning typical programming concepts in an introductory programming course (CS1). The course includes exercises in decision trees, a novel game called Find the Gnomes to introduce supervised learning, the construction and application of a vectorized neural network unit class, and obtaining speedup in training through parallelism. The exercises are designed to teach students typical introductory programming concepts while also providing a preview and motivating example of advanced CS topics. Students' understanding and motivation are considered through a detailed analysis of pre- and post-survey data gathered in several sections of the course each taught by one of four instructors across five semesters.