92% of those working in information and communication technology will see “high or moderate transformation” thanks to AI tools, according to a new report.
If that’s your field, there’s one clear solution: Upskilling with some AI training courses that can help you figure out how to apply the new technology to speed up your tasks. Top areas to improve in include prompt engineering — the term for writing text commands to ChatGPT or similar generative text bots — as well as AI literacy and data analytics.
The good news is that learning the basics of AI won’t need to cost you a dime: Plenty of online courses are available for free to help the general public get their grounding in the new technology.
Here, we’ve rounded up all the top courses available this month, with a wide range that covers general and specific training areas, as well as those that will take months to complete alongside courses that can be covered entirely in one afternoon.
Polytechnic University of Milan: Artificial Intelligence – an Overview Specialization
⏰Length: About 24 hours
Italy’s biggest technical university has expanded online with this course, which is itself composed of five smaller courses that will last a grand total of 24 hours. If you fit in three hours a week, you can complete it in a tidy two-month period. Since it’s available in 21 different languages, you won’t have to worry about brushing up on your Italian, which is molto bene.
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The five course titles you’ll complete include: Artificial Intelligence: An Overview; Ethics of Artificial Intelligence; Artificial Intelligence and Legal Issues; Technologies and Platforms for Artificial Intelligence; and, finally, Machine Learning: an Overview.
That’s a broad swath of key subject matter for AI beginners, all from a top university. It pairs management knowledge alongside concepts including algorithms and machine learning, so middle managers can benefit from the practical AI upskilling they need as well.
You can get started today, over on Coursera.
IBM: AI Foundations for Everyone Specialization
⏰Length: About 33 hours
Join the 30,000 students of IBM’s own round-up of beginner courses for AI with a selection that starts with the straightforwardly titled “Introduction to AI,” and includes three others: Generative AI: Introduction and Applications; Generative AI: Prompt Engineering Basics; and Building AI Powered Chatbots Without Programming.
IBM has a long history of cutting-edge computing knowledge, making them the natural pick for an intro course on the latest tech tool, Large Language Models. The initial intro course is just 8 hours long, and you won’t have to commit to more than that if you’re just hoping to wade into the topic a little.
Stick with the entire suite of courses, however, and you’ll pick up knowledge that can help you distinguish between generative AI and discriminative AI, identify the typical models and tools used for generating text, code, images, audio, or video, and even digest the most common approaches when it comes to writing effective prompts.
You can check out all the IBM introductory courses now on Coursera.
3Blue1Brown: But What Is a Neural Network?
⏰ Length: About 1.5 hours
Look, sometimes Coursera is a little too much effort. But who isn’t a fan of YouTube essays? Check out this 6-video playlist for a fast-paced, digestible approach to teaching people about a single term that most average people know next to nothing about: neural networks.
YouTuber 3Blue1Brown breaks down physics and math concepts, with the overall goal of educating his audience on the principles behind STEM concepts rather than forcing them to tackle rote math problems. The videos are easy to follow, and if you’ve ever found yourself sucked into a four-hour YouTube video on something like a theme park before, you’re not going to be surprised to hear that this course is easily the most fun option in this guide.
Different videos cover concepts like gradient descent, GPTs, and backpropagation. In under two hours, you can emerge with a nuanced grasp on why neural networks are so interesting and potentially powerful. Head over to Youtube for the full playlist.
IBM: Machine Learning with Python
⏰ Length: About 13 hours
If you’re already familar with the popular programming language Python, perhaps you’re better off skipping the general-knowledge courses and hopping right into a specific one: IBM’s guide to machine learning in relationship to Python. It’s not just a huge programming language with a myriad of applications across the tech industry; it’s one of the biggest languages within the world of AI tech.
With this course, you’ll learn about the most common Machine Learning algorithms, as well as a range of linear classification methods, from multiclass prediction and support vector machines to logistic regression. Plus, you’ll write your own Python code for decision or regression trees, and learn the right metrics to use when evaluating data sets.
You can check out the Python course here, or you can head over to the larger AI engineering certificate that this course is just one element within.
DeepLearning.AI: Generative AI for Everyone
⏰ Length: About 5 hours
The AI-focused education technology company DeepLearning.AI has a handful of intro courses available. You can start with this generative AI course, but there are plenty of others that should be enough to keep you busy for a while.
Site founder Andrew Ng teaches it, covering basics including how the tech works, what opportunities and risks it presents, and “how to think through the lifecycle of a generative AI project, from conception to launch, including how to build effective prompts.”
Strategy and productivity are stressed as skills you’ll gain from this one, placing it high on the list of quick courses for general workers and managers who want to figure out how AI tools can actually help them speed up their daily tasks. Visit Coursera to get started on this one today.
Prompt Engineer Your Way Into AI Learning
AI won’t be fully taking over the world anytime soon. According to some, the hype cycle is already dying down.
But the overblown threat of AI wiping out entire career paths will likely give way to a more mundane reality: AI tools will slip into everyday use in tiny ways. AI won’t become a project manager, but project managers can use the right AI tools to become 10% more efficient when drafting emails or adding meetings to their calendar.
It’s all a matter of knowing what steps to take, which is why we have a host of guides ourself, from how to write AI prompts to creating your own resume templates to integrating a new ChatGPT-powered application into your workflow.
