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Artificial Intelligence has everyone talking and thinking about how it will impact our daily lives. From medical science applications like helping nonverbal people speak to more common applications like writing emails, AI is being developed as a tool to make our lives easier.
Businesses know AI technology is here to stay, and leaders want more people on their teams who know how to leverage its power to improve sales and customer service.
Amazon just announced a new initiative, “AI Ready,” to open up this new world to 2 million people by 2025.
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Amazon sees AI’s potential as a business game changer and wants to provide free education for prospective and current employees who wish to learn more about the technology. Calling AI the “most transformative technology of our generation,” the company wants to make it accessible to anyone who wants to use it to solve “the world’s most challenging problems.”
“The goal of AI Ready is to help level the playing field of AI education, supported by the new initiatives we’re launching today,” Swami Sivasubramanian, vice president of Data and AI at Amazon Web Services, said in a company press release from Nov. 20. “We will also scale our existing free AI training programs and courses as we continue to remove cost as a barrier to accessing these critical skills.”
A recent study funded by Amazon showed that 73% of employers feel artificial intelligence is a priority for their business. Still, three-quarters cannot find qualified people to handle the technology. This gap in training led Amazon leaders to develop these free courses for the public.
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There are more than 80 free and low-cost AI courses to suit anyone, including those with no background in artificial intelligence — including eight new offerings. Three of these are geared to nontechnical audiences:
- Introduction to Generative AI: Learn about artificial intelligence applications and need-to-know concepts.
- Generative AI Learning Plan for Decision Makers: Work through a three-course series about how to plan a generative AI project
- Introduction to Amazon CodeWhisperer: This one teaches participants how to use Amazon’s AI code generator.
Five additional new courses are more tailored to developers and technical audiences: Foundations of Prompt Engineering, Low-Code Machine Learning on AWS, Building Language Models on AWS, Amazon Transcribe—Getting Started, and Building Generative AI Applications Using Amazon Bedrock. They’re all available through AWS Skill Builder.
You’ll need to register for access. In the meantime, you can introduce your kids to AI through the Hour of Code Dance Party with AI.
About the Author
Marie is a freelance writer and content creator with more than 20 years of experience in journalism. She lives in southwest Ohio with her husband and is almost a full-fledged empty nest mom of two daughters. She loves music, reading, word games, and Walt Disney World. You can find her writing about her personal health journey at marierossiter.substack.com and connect with her at marierossiter@gmail.com More.
