A Slew Of AI Courses To Get Yourself Up to Speed

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When there’s a new technology, there’s always a slew of people who want to educate you about it. Some want to teach you to use their tools, some want you to pay for training, and others will use free training to entice you to buy further training. Since AI is the new hot buzzword, there are plenty of free classes from reputable sources. The nice thing about a free class is that if you find it isn’t doing it for you, there’s no penalty to just quit.

We noticed NVIDIA — one of the companies that has most profited from the AI boom — has some courses (not all free, though). Generative AI Explained, and Augment your LLM Using Retrieval Augmented Generation caught our eye. There’s also Building a Brain in 10 Minutes, and Introduction to Physics-informed Machine Learning with Modulus. These are all quite short, though.

Surprisingly, Google hasn’t been as successful with AI, but it does have some longer and possibly more technical topics in its Google Cloud Skills Boost program. There are actually several “paths” with AI content, such as “Generative AI for Developers.” If you prefer Amazon, they have a training center with many free courses, including those on AI topics like Foundations of Prompt Engineering. Of course, you can expect these offerings will center on what a great idea the Google systems or the Amazon systems are. Can’t blame them for that.

They are all, of course, playing catchup to OpenAI. If you prefer to see what classes they offer, you can check out their partner DeepLearning.ai. Many other vendors have training here, also.

If you want something more rigorous, edX has a plethora of AI classes ranging from Harvard’s CS50 introduction class that uses Python (see the almost 12-hour video below) to offerings from IBM, Google, and others. These are typically free, but you have to pay if you want grading and a certificate or college credit. Microsoft also offers a comprehensive 12-week study program.

Naturally, there are more. The good news if you have choices. The bad news is that it is probably easy to make the wrong choice. Do you have any you’ve taken that you’d recommend or not recommend? Leave us a comment!

We are always amazed at how much you can learn online if you are structured and disciplined about it. There is no shortage of materials from very reputable schools available.

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