With every day that passes, AI technology is making strides, and the demand for AI-related skills increases along with it. In fact, 68% of executives in a global study by Deloitte reported a
moderate-to-extreme AI skills gap to keep up with their needs. To help close the knowledge gap, big tech companies have been publishing high-quality AI learning content.Whether you're looking to upskill in a particular AI-related area or you just want a better understanding of where we are now and where we're heading, investing time to learn this stuff will unequivocally pay off.
The problem: there's a lot of AI learning content out there, and some of it is not so great, while others cost thousands of dollars to complete. So I spent time sifting through swaths of online AI courses available right now to pull out the best, most actionable (and affordable!) ones on offer.
The courses on this list are meant for beginners who want to introduce AI into their work, so check your
impostor syndrome at the door, and start learning.The best AI courses for beginners at a glance
|
Course name |
Creator |
What you'll learn |
Time to complete |
Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI for Everyone |
DeepLearning.AI |
Introduction to AI, building AI into business, AI's impact on society |
Under 10 hours |
Free for read-only or $49 to earn certificate |
| Applying Generative AI as a Business Professional |
|
How to generate prompts, using generative AI for writing, research, and AI-generated images |
Around 15 hours |
Free for 1 month, $39.99/month (or $24.99/month, if paid annually) |
| Introduction to Generative AI Learning Path |
|
Overview of generative AI, large language models, using AI responsibly |
5 days recommended |
Free; $29/month after one free month |
| AI for Business Specialization |
University of Pennsylvania |
AI fundamentals, AI applications in marketing finance, and people management, AI strategy and governance |
Around 1 month |
7-day free trial, $59/month |
| AI Foundations for Everyone |
IBM |
Introduction to AI, IBM Watson, creating a chatbot with Watson |
7 days recommended |
7-day free trial, $59/month |
| Elements of AI |
University of Helsinki |
AI problem solving, understanding AI in the real world, neural networks, implications of AI |
Self-paced |
Free |
| Increase productivity using AI |
Zapier |
How to craft powerful prompts, pairing automation with AI, building an AI chatbot |
Under 30 minutes |
Free |
| AI for Marketing Course |
HubSpot |
Creating and optimizing prompts, leveraging AI in marketing and customer experience, using AI in reporting |
3 hours |
Free |
Why learn about AI?
Instead of spending your time asking Google "will AI take my job?" you're better off learning how to use AI to your advantage. Because if you don't, the answer will likely be a hard yes.
Regardless of how you feel about AI, it's a tool that every knowledge worker can use to do their job better. That's true for writers, coders, project managers, HR professionals, marketers, salespeople—and everyone in between.
The good news: you don't have to be tech-advanced to be able to learn how to use AI. AI is having its moment because of how powerful new models are, but part of the reason AI has been so headline-y is that it's so accessible. If you have access to the internet, you can use AI.
So learn how to
embrace AI at work—these eight classes can help.1. AI for Everyone (DeepLearning.AI)
As you can imagine, there's a whole load of different AI courses available through the DeepLearning.AI website—that's literally their business model. I was surprised to see how affordable the courses are too. The vast majority of their short courses are hosted natively on the DeepLearning website and are free to enroll once you register. Some courses (like the AI for Everyone course, for example) are hosted on Coursera, and range from around $39 to $79 if you want to take the final assessment to earn a certificate of completion.
Andrew Ng also happens to be the co-founder of Coursera, so you can access a lot of his other course content through a Coursera subscription (which is free for the first seven days). His course
AI for Everyone is by far the most popular online AI course I've come across. Nearly 1.5 million people have taken the course so far, and it's had well over 40,000 positive reviews.The course itself covers a whole lot of introductory ground across its four modules, including how to build AI into your business and how AI is impacting society.
While the course information says you should be able to complete the course in under 6 hours, there's a lot of content to get through. Modules include 8-10 videos, and there's a quiz at the end of each block, so it could easily take a lot longer to complete. If you're looking for something shorter, keep scrolling.
Price: Free to take the course as read-only; $49 to take the final assessment and earn a certificate of completion
2. Applying Generative AI as a Business Professional (LinkedIn)
If there's one platform that knows the value of upskilling, it's LinkedIn. So it's not surprising that if you run a search on
LinkedIn Learning, you'll see there's a whole bunch of educational AI video content available on the platform.I've watched a lot of the free AI video content and found most of it really useful for providing top-level context to using AI at work. It's all general enough that you can apply it to most industries. Helpfully, LinkedIn has organized a lot of the content into cohesive learning paths.
If you're very new to AI, there's a
Career Essentials in Generative AI path that focuses on what generative AI is and how you can use it in the workplace. ButApplying Generative AI as a Business Professional is the one I found to be the most practical. There's content in there that will show you how to generate the best prompts, use generative AI to write content, perform solid research, andcreate AI-generated images on Midjourney. Everything that will help you leverage generative AI in your job, basically.Making your way through this content path will take around 15 hours. There are seven chapters to the course, which includes a total of six hours of video content and quizzes to complete as you move through each chapter. And if you take the exam at the end, you'll get a Professional Certificate from Microsoft that you can display on your LinkedIn profile too.
A subscription to LinkedIn Learning is free for the first month, so you could do one of these courses (or both, depending on how much free time you have) within the free month trial.
Price: Free for 1 month; $39.99/month (or $24.99/month, paid annually) after that
3. Introduction to Generative AI Learning Path (Google)
To no one's surprise, Google is also offering a whole load of different AI-related online courses and educational content. Of all Google's AI material I've found, the
Introduction to Generative AI Learning Path seems to be the best value in terms of the amount of course material involved.This is an introductory course that will give you a good overview of generative AI,
large language models, andusing AI responsibly. The learning path is made up of five courses, offered through Google Cloud's Skills Boost program.Google recommends you dedicate one day per course, as you make your way through various videos, reading material, and quizzes. Some blocks involve more material than others, and completing a course will earn you 300 credits.
You can consume all the content for free, but to take a "Lab" (to test your knowledge and earn a completion badge that will go on your Google profile), you need to subscribe or have earned enough credits. Google Cloud's Skills Boost subscription is free for the first month, then $29/month thereafter.
Price: Free; to get a completion badge, $29/month after 1 free month (or $299 for an annual Google Cloud Skills Boost subscription)
4. AI for Business Specialization (University of Pennsylvania)
The University of Pennsylvania offers an
AI For Business Specialization course through Coursera that covers a broad spectrum of interest areas within it. The course is made up of four modules:-
AI Fundamentals for Non-Data Scientists
-
AI Applications in Marketing and Finance
-
AI Applications in People Management
-
AI Strategy and Governance
The course is suitable for beginners, but the content is aimed at business leaders and managers. It focuses on providing a holistic overview of these different areas of AI and how they relate to each other. The content also gives guidance on how you can best implement AI across different areas of your organization and use it to your advantage.
This course is taught by professors at the Wharton School, one of the top-ranking business schools in the world. Completing the entire course should take around one month, assuming you're able to dedicate 10 hours per week to the content. You're also expected to take part in peer-reviewed assessments for each module, and if you complete them, you'll come away with a certificate that's shareable on your LinkedIn profile.
Coursera has a free seven-day trial, in which time you could complete one of the modules (around 10 hours) to be sure it was worth your time. After the free trial, a Coursera subscription is $59/month.
Price: 7-day free trial; $59/month after that or $399 for the year
5. AI Foundations for Everyone Specialization (IBM)
IBM offers a few different beginner-level AI courses through online learning platforms. One great example is its
AI for Everyone: Master the Basics course on EdX, which offers a pretty comprehensive overview of AI in just eight hours of content.But my pick here is IBM's
AI Foundations for Everyone Specialization course on Coursera. It's also a beginner's course, but the modules are a bit more practical and specialized, meaning you'll come out with slightly more actionable knowledge.It's delivered in four blocks. The first is an introduction to AI and its uses in the workplace. The next two blocks focus on generative AI, introducing applications, use cases, and how prompts work. The final block is a bit more practical, where you'll get an introduction to IBM's generative AI product, IBM Watson, then learn how to use Watson to create a chatbot code-free. It's a bit of a sales tool, but it'll also give you insights into how big tech companies are developing these tools and how you would potentially bring them into your organization.
Similar to UPenn's course above, you can complete this course for free if you complete it within Coursera's seven-day free trial.
Price: 7-day free trial; $59/month after that
6. Elements of AI (University of Helsinki)
The University of Helsinki launched its introductory
Elements of AI course way back in 2018 (but don't worry—the content is up to date now). Since then, more than a million people have taken the course, and it's available in 26 languages.Elements of AI is one of the many courses hosted through the University's own MOOC (massive open online course) in partnership with MinnaLearn. The course is made up of six core blocks, including chapters on AI problem solving, machine learning, neural networks, and the societal implications of the technology. (If implications and ethics is a side of AI you're interested in, the University also runs an
Ethics of AI course that's worth checking out.)This is a great course that comes with practical exercises scattered through each block to allow you to apply some of the information you're consuming. There's no certification of completion, but the course is completely free, and you can complete it at your own pace.
But there's one thing I need to flag: if you're a visual learner, you might find this course a bit challenging. The downside of making the course accessible in so many languages is that there's no video accompaniment. The whole course is text-based.
Price: Free
7. Increase productivity using AI (Zapier)
If you're more hands-on—looking to get a quick crash course in the basics and then dive right into using AI—this is a great course to start with. Once you're done, you can stick around on Zapier to
experiment with AI tools and connect them to all the other apps you use at work.Price: Free
8. AI for Marketing Course (HubSpot)
You don't have to be a paying user to take
HubSpot's AI for Marketing Course. In fact, you don't have to be a HubSpot user at all. In this introductory course, they cover all the AI marketing essentials without even giving you a flash of the HubSpot dashboard.Instead, they bring in a range of marketing experts—both from HubSpot and external to the company—to give a clear overview and offer insights into how they're currently using AI in their own campaigns.
It's a six-lesson video course that covers a lot of ground, from practical tips on how to use and optimize AI prompts to generate the content you want, to using your data to make AI-driven marketing decisions. The scope of the content makes it broad enough that it's valuable for marketing beginners all the way through to business owners and leaders.
What really stood out for me in this course was the informal but informative delivery of the content and how relatable the discussions were. A lot of the AI video courses out there can get a bit stiff and scripted (you might even say robotic), so bringing in a range of speakers made this course more engaging for me.
Price: Free
Learn about AI—and then put it to work
Regardless of which course you go for, any time you spend educating yourself on AI is going to be a smart investment. If you have a particular area of interest in relation to AI that's not covered in this list, it's worth running a search to see if there's learning content already available on that topic.
And for every hour you spend learning about AI, spend an hour tinkering with it too.
ChatGPT andZapier Chatbots are two easy places to get started.Related reading:
- What is AI?
- Machine learning vs. AI: What's the difference?
- Embracing AI at work: 4 ways to make AI less scary for your team
- What is multimodal AI? Large multimodal models, explained
This article was originally published in October 2023. The most recent update was in October 2024.